Injuries dogged the Huskies’ football team last season.

In the 2007 season, NIU had more than 25 players miss at least one game due to injury. The result was a 2-10 season.

Unfortunately for the Huskies, the injuries have carried over into spring practice and have forced NIU to alter its spring game at 1 p.m.Saturday at Huskie Stadium.

Instead of having a traditional spring game in which the red squad takes on the black squad, this year’s spring game will be like a normal practice.

“We’ll scrimmage a little bit and do some situations,” coach Jerry Kill said. “The injury list we have, it’s very deep. To me it’s another practice, another day of evaluating.”

Several Huskies have missed practice this spring. The list includes receivers Matt Simon and Britt Davis, quarterback Dan Nicholson and Larry English. English won the MAC MVP award last season and was selected for the first team All-MAC.

“We had 18 guys not practicing before we started. There’s probably about 22 now,” Kill said. “Most of them are guys who have played or started.”

However, the “spring game” still means one thing for the players – the culmination of spring practice. It is the end of more than a month of hard work.

“It’s like a celebration,” running back Justin Anderson said. “We’ve been grinding for 15 practices and beating up on each other.”

“It’s just to close everything out and bring everybody together for the last practice,” linebacker John Tranchitella said. “To show the coaches and fans what we’ve learned.”

The game also brings an end to Kill’s first NIU preseason. After five weeks of practice, there is one thing that the players have noticed about their new head coach.

“He’s a very intense coach,” Tranchitella said. “Coach Kill has a lot of energy. He’s running around the field doing a lot of different things.”

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