Take a look at the Elon University football roster from just a season ago. There are six names listed at the running back position for the Phoenix.
In the 2012 edition, you will notice five names listed at running back. Of those five names, you’ll find only one of them on the roster from last year.
When looking at those five names for 2012, you’ll notice that none of them match up to the six from the 2011 roster. Look again, but this time, look at the tight end position from 2011. There’s a name you should find familiar.
Junior Matt Eastman is the only running back on the team who was on the roster last year, and he wasn’t even a running back. Eastman came into the program in 2009 as a fullback. Now a redshirt junior, he’s playing his third different position in three years after being a backup tight end last season behind departed senior Andre Labinowicz.
As a redshirt junior, Eastman is considered the veteran in Elon’s stable of running backs. But he’s also considered a situation back, according to Elon offensive coordinator and running backs coach Chris Pincince.
“He’s the bigger back for us,” Pincince said. “He’s a pass protection guy and the guy down at the goal line that can carry the ball.”
There’s just one problem. He’s been hurt. Eastman has been out since preseason with a leg injury.
With the veteran who’s not really a veteran at the position out of action, that leaves four remaining running backs on the roster. Check that number again, though. You can take freshman BJ Bennett’s name off the list. Bennett has a shoulder injury that has knocked him out of consideration for carries this season for the Phoenix.
Now the Phoenix are down to three—a sophomore and two freshmen. Fortunately, those three are healthy, which is good because they now own the Elon backfield.
These three active running backs have one thing in common: they are all in their first season with the program. Sophomore Karl Bostick is a transfer from the University of Akron. Freshman Thuc Phan has a year of prep school experience, having played a season at Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts, while fellow freshman Tracey Coppedge is the youngest of the group. He comes to Elon from Southern Nash High School in Nashville.
It’s been three different paths for these three running backs on their journey to Elon, but they all have a similar goal in mind: to help the team win. They just have three different ways to get there.
Bostick comes to Elon with the most experience of the three. After graduating from Bergen Catholic High School in Englewood, N.J., Bostick enrolled at the University of Akron to play football. During the course of his freshman year, he totaled 27 carries for 94 yards and a touchdown. After the season, Akron decided it was time to make a change at the head coaching position. It was a decision that didn’t sit very well with Bostick.
“We got a new coaching staff and I realized that I wasn’t going to fit in in that system,” Bostick said. “So I knew I had to find somewhere else to go.”
Bostick made a late decision to transfer from Akron, which put him in a tough situation because teams had already completed their recruiting pitches to players.
“I was really stuck because at the time, teams are finalizing their rosters and I wanted to find somewhere where I would actually have an opportunity to play and contribute,” Bostick said.
A driving factor in Bostick’s decision to come to Elon was the NCAA’s new transfer rules, he said. If a player is looking to transfer to another program, the player can transfer from an FBS program to an FCS program without having to sit out a season, which is a very appealing option for transfers.
“There were other offers from FBS and FCS, but none of them offered what Elon could offer me,” Bostick said.
Now considered Elon’s lead running back, the team relies on Bostick to run the ball, and run it with consistency.
“We needed an older guy,” Pincince said. “Knowing the lack of experience we had at the running back position, we needed a guy that could come in and play right away. We thought Karl, being an older guy, was big and something that other kids couldn’t give us.”
As for learning the playbook, besides being thrown into the fire week one against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Pincince said Bostick’s transition to Elon has been smooth.
“He’s a smart kid so he’s been good,” Pincince said. “We knew him coming out of high school and we were lucky to get him in the offseason because we needed a running back. He had limited carries as a freshman at Akron, so this is really his first year playing full time, but he’s a very smart kid. He came out of a great high school program at Bergen Catholic, and then the experience over at Akron. He’s had no problem grasping our system at all.”
When the season comes to an end in the middle of November, Bostick said his goal is to be on top in all aspects of the phrase.
“It may sound cliche, but I’m serious. I want to win,” he said. “We’re trying to win the SoCon. Coach says it. It’s no secret, and every game is taking a step forward in that process.”
For Phan, this year has a simple goal: to help the team win in any way he can.
“For me, I want to be acclimated with the team and make sure I know the offense and try to learn and find ways to contribute any way I can,” Phan said.
After playing his high school football just down the road at Greensboro Page High School, Phan spent a year at Deerfield Academy prior to coming to Elon.
Over the course of his season at Deerfield Academy, Phan ran for 700 yards while scoring 14 touchdowns in the Big Green’s seven game season.
“Prep school definitely helped me out a lot,” Phan said. “I’ve come here overall better prepared academically and athletically, and it really helped my work ethic as an individual.”
After his season at Deerfield, it was time to move on, and Phan said he felt like Elon was the perfect place to call home for the next four years.
“I had a couple other preferred walk-on offers from other SoCon schools, but I’m from Greensboro, and I just thought here was a beautiful place where I could get a great education being closer to my family,” Phan said. “Plus, I knew Swepson prior to coming to Elon and he seemed like a great coach and this seemed like a great program.”
Phan stands at five feet six inches and weights 170 pounds. Both are generous numbers, but Pincince said that doesn’t affect his ability to carry the ball.
“From a physical standpoint, he’s a quick little guy and he’s dynamic with the ball in his hands,” Pincince said. “In our offense, we need someone that can make people miss and run in space and that’s what he’s able to do.”
Finally, move to the young one of the bunch in Coppedge. For Coppedge, playing college football is a whole new game compared to high school.
“This is college ball now,” he said. “It’s not high school ball anymore. This is much faster.”
Coming into a system with next to nothing pre-existing from the year before, Coppedge says it’s “very different,” but something he has embraced as a challenge.
“When I first got here, it was a whole new situation,” Coppedge said. “It was different, but this is a learning experience because you get to kind of jump straight into it and you have to get used to it right away.”
In high school, Pincince said Coppedge was always one of the top players on the field, but now that he’s arrived at Elon, he’s been asked to do some different things from what he was used to in high school.
“It’s a different world for him,” Pincince said. “He was always the best player on the field over at Southern Nash. He was always the fastest, always the best. Now, coming over here, we asked him to do some things that maybe he hadn’t done in the past. We asked him to pass protect, we asked him to catch the football a little more. He can run it, that comes natural to him, and everything else is kind of coming along.”
Deciding to stay in-state and come to Elon to play his college football was an easy decision for Coppedge, citing the feeling of being part of a family and getting a chance to play in his first year.
“I had a whole bunch of offers but I decided to come here because it seemed more like family here,” Coppedge said. “This is the place I have to be for four years, basically my new home, so I just wanted to be here with a bunch of people that have become my new family.”
According to Pincince, something the Phoenix has been lacking in the last couple of years in the backfield is someone who can break big plays on the ground and gain 60 and 70 yards at a time. He said Coppedge brings that big play ability to the Elon backfield.
“He’s dynamic with the ball in his hands,” Pincince said. “He makes people miss with his big play ability. We’ve been missing that for a couple years, but Tracey now, and certainly in the future, can bring that to us.”
As for his adjustment to the Elon family, Pincince said it’s been a learning experience for Coppedge, but said that he will be in great shape by the end of the season.
“It’s a big adjustment from high school to college,” Pincince said. “He’s learning every day and certainly by week 11, he’ll certainly be in great shape.”
Coppedge’s goal for the season is lofty, but it’s a testament to the drive he possesses to succeed on the field.
“The goal I had when I first came here was to play my first year,” Coppedge said. “Now, when this year is over, I want to be able to have done something that no other freshman has done before on the field.”
With Eastman expected back in action in the very near future, Pincince expects him to fit right in with the three younger backs, saying Eastman will fill another key role for the Phoenix.
“He’s our pass protection guy and the guy down at the goal line that can carry the ball,” Pincince said. “He’s going to allow us to rest the younger guys and that’ll be big.”
Seeing how Elon’s offense is primarily a passing offense, the importance of being able to run the ball becomes even more important just to keep opposing defenses from keying in on Phoenix receivers and completely ignoring the run. You wouldn’t know it was a passing offense though just by looking at the statistics from last weekend’s game against West Virginia State University.
Elon ball carriers rushed for a combined 301 yards on the afternoon, which is the most rushing yards the Phoenix has had in a single game since a Nov. 2002 matchup against Charleston Southern when the Phoenix posted 307 yards on the ground. Of the trio of young backs, Phan led the way with 110 yards. Bostick totaled 77 while Coppedge ran for 64 yards.
As for the way the three have carried the Phoenix ground game to this point of the season, Pincince said it has been a good mix between the three of them and the future of the Elon backfield is bright because of it.
“Karl (Bostick) is the best of the package from a standpoint of I think he can do a little bit of everything for us,” Pincince said. “The other guys are slowly coming along from a pass protection standpoint, but we saw Tracey take the next step in being able to pass protect and Thuc has been able to carry the football in the fourth quarter, so all of that will be very good for us in the future.”