By TOM ZEBOLD
USF Senior Writer
TAMPA - The day Skip Holtz has eagerly waited for has finally arrived.
Sunday was reporting day for the USF football team and the Bulls' head coach sported a huge smile during his first press conference of the new season inside the Lee Roy Selmon Athletic Center.
"I was ready to start this season on Dec. 8 of last year. I was ready to go again. I've been waiting a long time for this day," Holtz told reporters.
The Bulls will kick off fall camp Monday at 8 a.m. with meetings and the team will be in shorts for practice on campus Monday and Tuesday afternoon. USF will travel to Vero Beach on Wednesday morning and will practice Wednesday and Thursday afternoon in shorts. The Bulls' first day in pads will be Friday.
USF's scrimmages in Vero Beach are scheduled for Monday, Aug. 13 and Saturday, Aug. 18. The Bulls will be back in Tampa for Fan Fest Aug. 19 at Raymond James Stadium from 2-4 p.m.
"I'm really excited to go to camp, be around these players and be able to get back on the grass, put the ball on the tee and be able to coach ball again," Holtz said. "It will be a challenging year for us, especially coming from what we did, where we were at the end of the last year. I know an awful lot of these players are motivated to jump into this thing ready to get going."
Holtz rolled out his goals for camp that include filling holes in the depth chart, getting schematics together and tuning up on special teams on top of perhaps the most important task - building togetherness as a team.
"One of the advantages of going to Vero Beach is kind of having zero distractions," Holtz said. "For 10 days we're going to have 105 players and approximately 15 coaches that will be spending pretty much 24 hours a day within about 300 yards of each other. There will be a lot of bonds, closeness and relationships."
This will mark quarterback B.J. Daniels' third trip to Vero Beach and the camp veteran looked as eager as his coach to get things going Sunday afternoon.
"Everybody is joking, saying I'm the old man on the team," he said. "... It means I have to hurry up and do something. There's a sense of urgency to step up as a leader on and off the field and trying to help out the younger guys."
Check back to GoUSFBulls.com Monday evening for USF's first practice report of the fall along with daily notes and video that can be accessed on the Training Camp Central page.
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