Arkansas Baptist Buffaloes Continue Baby Steps Toward Success

Coach Richard Wilson, athletic director Charles Ripley, school president Fitzgerald Hill - they all knew the Arkansas Baptist inaugural football team would be in for a rough go in Year 1.

The Buffaloes, the first junior college squad in the Capital City in half a century, accepted the challenge of playing in the Southwest Junior College Football League, perennially regarded as one of the nation's strongest junior college football leagues. As expected, they took their lumps hard. Occasionally, though, there was a glimmer or two of hope in an 0-8 season.

Such a time came at Kilgore, Texas, the week after the Rangers had upended defending national champion Blinn Junior College. Either Kilgore was sleepwalking or ABC was playing above their heads, but in the second quarter the Buffaloes were up 15-3.

Kilgore wore down the undermanned Buffs in the second half for a 30-15 win, but for a while the Little Rock team knew it could compete. Building off of that is the goal for this season, the second for Arkansas Baptist.

"Our first-year goal was establishing a team and taking them through spring practice, a first full year as a program and establishing a foundation," Wilson said. "The second step in the process is to become competitive in the fourth quarter. I'd like to be like anybody else and talk about winning, but we'll talk about winning when we can get competitive in the fourth quarter."

Getting there means finding more quality depth and building up the talent in the offensive and defensive lines. Arkansas Baptist started its program with 175 people trying out, but as Wilson points out, many of those dreamed of being a quarterback, a running back or a receiver. Linemen were tough to find, certainly enough to be scrimmaging in practice and banging up what few big men were available.

Recruiting between the end of last season and the start of August drills figures to improve the situation, Wilson said. So too should offseason workouts.

"We instituted an offseason where they're stronger, they're in better condition, they've lifted weights," Wilson said. "Our staff has to take the challenge that if you're going to help your team get better, you've got to recruit with the idea to make every first-teamer a second-teamer or to give competition to those kids we already have. With the combination of the transfer kids that want to come in and some of our recruits, we can promote that kind of competition. And in our recruiting we're targeting more big-body guys, targeting high school offensive and defensive guys to be part of our program."

Arkansas Baptist kept the heavy workout scaled back in the spring, Wilson said, and 65 players made it through with flying colors. Another 30 or so were told in no uncertain terms that studies came first before football. Wilson said several have visited with him since the spring to see about coming back.