South Carolina reports back to campus this week. Here's what June looks like for the team
After a brief physical and mental break for much of May, the South Carolina football team will report back to campus this week as it begins preparations in earnest for the 2024 campaign.
Summer strength and conditioning workouts have long been a part of the offseason for pretty much every program in the country, but recent NCAA rule changes in the last few years have allowed for more football-based activities during the summer as well.
“One of the things that I like that the NCAA has done is a few years ago they gave us the ability to spend a little bit more time with our players in the summertime,” South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer said last week in Myrtle Beach. “So they’ll come back in. We have a team meeting Monday night. We’ll start workouts on Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. And our guys will lift four days a week.”
Beamer encouraged his team to use May to go home, take any needed breaks, and reset a bit before the summer grind begins. Some took him up on that, while others remained in Columbia to continue to use the facilities to work out.
For most of the roster, Monday will mark an official return to team activities. For others, it will mark their first taste of college athletics — or at least athletics at USC.
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Three freshmen — defensive back Jalewis Solomon, tight end Michael Smith, and running back Matthew Fuller — as well as transfer wide receivers Dalevon Campbell and Vandrevious Jacobs are scheduled to officially join the team this week.
It will be the first time that nearly the entire 2024 roster will be intact as the Gamecocks will only be waiting on JUCO transfer Jerome Simmons, who will enroll later in the summer, to arrive.
“Within those four days, we’ll have a couple hours a week where we can have meetings with them or do position-specific stuff on the field,” Beamer continued. “We’re not allowed to do anything necessarily offense versus defense against each other with the coaches out there. They can, but we can’t be out there. But we’ll be able to work some position-specific stuff. It’ll be great. We’ve got some guys, a couple transfer receivers coming in, some freshmen that will just be getting here, where our coaches will be able to work with them a couple hours a week. So that’ll be great.”
It’s a return to action for not just the players but the staff as well in a month that has morphed into one of the business in the modern college football calendar.
“And June’s really busy, obviously,” Beamer said. “We’re doing workouts with our own players. We have summer camps for the high school young men pretty much every day, it seems, recruiting weekends where we have official visits. So June is really, really, really busy for us. But we’re fortunate that we’re able to get a couple hours a week of football work with our guys.”
