{"id":6532,"date":"2021-04-01T09:52:08","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T13:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/?p=6532"},"modified":"2025-07-09T12:39:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T16:39:58","slug":"did-someone-say-umpi-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/2021\/04\/01\/did-someone-say-umpi-football\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Someone Say UMPI Football?!?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0You heard it here first folks! The University of Maine at Presque Isle is getting a football team. Its initial season will be the fall of 2021 semester. Coach Roger Stinson has decided to step up and help coach the team along with his assistant coach, Roberto De La Pena, by his side. Cullen Marrella, the head strength and conditioning coach, said, \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to the upcoming season and can\u2019t wait to show what UMPI can do.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0They hope to get 12 games for their initial season. As a matter of fact, they have their opening game against the New England Patriots here at UMPI on Park Family Field.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

One of the NCAA Footballs UMPI’s team will use.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Most of the athletes on the UMPI sports teams are expected to join the team. UMPI decided to start a football program because a lot of students had requested one. Also, President Rice thought it would be a good idea to approve this because football is the most watched sport in the U.S. He believes that if we had a football team, we could potentially draw more students to attend UMPI as well as get more local fans to come to the games and support the school. This would help the school as a whole because the more money the games bring in, the more it helps our programs when it comes to getting bigger and better things. This includes things such as equipment and facilities, as well as just our overall campus life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Coach Stinson has started his search for football players around the country to bring back here to Maine. The main resource he\u2019s using to find players is NCSA. It\u2019s a website that stands for Next College Student Athlete. This website is where players make a profile with videos of themselves playing the sport that they would like to play in college.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Coach Stinson is also working very closely with another website called CaptainU, which is very similar to NCSA. CaptainU is an off brand NCSA. The only difference between the two companies is that NCSA has more support behind it. This means that it has more people who can call and work with student athletes on the phone and really help grow those students\u2019 profiles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The idea of UMPI getting a school football team started getting kicked around last fall before COVID hit and took the world by storm. The UMPI baseball team members would always go out and play snow football at least once a week–maybe more, depending on how their bodies were feeling. \u201cIt also depended on whether the baseball boys had practice that day because we didn\u2019t want to tire ourselves out,\u201d Payton Jones, an UMPI baseball player, said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0News that the boys were playing snow football games on the soccer field started to get around. People started showing up to come and watch the games and cheer on their favorite players. By the time the last game came around for the little snow football league the baseball team had put together, there were at least 50 people there watching the games. Among two of these 50 people in the stands that day were Coach Roger Stinson and President Ray Rice. After a big tackle on the field and after listening to the roar of the crowd, Coach Stinson and President Rice made eye contact with each other.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0President Rice said to Coach, \u201cAre you thinking what I\u2019m thinking?\u201d Stinson said, \u201cDefinitely!\u201d After that night of football came to an end, the plotting began for hatching an UMPI football team. Now the season starts the first Sunday we return to campus for the fall semester. The only question left to ask is, Are you ready?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0You heard it here first folks! The University of Maine at Presque Isle is getting a football team. Its initial season will be the fall of 2021 semester. Coach Roger Stinson has decided to step up and help coach the team along with his assistant coach, Roberto De La Pena, by his side. Cullen Marrella, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8300,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532\/revisions\/8300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}