From Snoring to Drills, Cincinnati’s Refocus on Winning Begins at This Indiana Outpost

Coach Luke Fickell looks to the days and nights in this unique environment—away from campus and almost every other element of society—to help build a team.

Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell believes the Higher Ground Conference preseason camp helps build a camaraderie within his team.  / University of Cincinnati Athletics

WEST HARRISON, Ind.—Josh Whyle has now completed his last tour of duty here at Higher Ground Conference and Retreat Center, a church camp that transforms into a hidden football haven every August. Cincinnati has been bunking at this 264-acre compound tucked into the rolling hills of southeastern Indiana for 24 years, and Whyle has been part of the last five. It is, as the tight end will attest, an acquired taste.

“You learn to love it here, for sure,” Whyle says.

What the seniors ultimately appreciate, the younger Bearcats tolerate. Especially the freshmen, whose sleeping quarters are a barracks-like bunk structure—dozens of big bodies trying to coexist in beds that are lined up next to each other and stacked on top of one another.

“I mean, snoring, rippin’ ass,” Whyle says, laughing at the memory. “It’s disgusting.”

Sawed logs and passed gas don’t enhance communal joy. And thankfully, the sleeping arrangements improve as players become upperclassmen. But what’s gained from having more than 100 players and coaches spending 16 preseason days and nights together at Higher Ground far outweighs the creature discomforts. Those preseason days and nights in this unique environment—away from campus and almost every other element of society—build a team.

Drive about 30 miles west from Cincinnati’s urban campus, go past the city’s bedroom communities, cross the Indiana state line, then turn onto a two-lane road that winds into nowhere. That’s where you’ll find Higher Ground, an unassuming collection of buildings just off Logan Creek Lane, on a road that looks like it was previously paved last century.

The property that was once used by the Cincinnati Boys Club for summer camp was taken over in 1980 by the Southwestern Ohio District of the Church of the Nazarene. It’s been used by various religious organizations since then, among other groups (a Mennonite kids’ camp followed the Bearcats this month). In the 1990s, it became UC’s marching band camp, and the football program followed a few years later under coach Rick Minter.

The Higher Ground Conference and Retreat Center’s remote location means limited distractions for players.  / University of Cincinnati Athletics

Over time, the facilities have grown and improved. UC’s connection to Higher Ground runs deep enough that its Bearcat logo adorns the middle of the main artificial turf field. But there is nothing fancy about the place, and the cell service is sketchy at best. Surrounded by forest, this is as close as a major-college football team can get to slipping off the grid in 2022.

In the dearth of distraction, focus flourishes. In the absence of outsiders, players look inward to each other. In the removal of luxury, appreciation of what’s essential grows.

This isn’t a “Junction Boys” penal camp kind of thing—those days are gone in college football. But it’s not easy and it’s not fancy (though the food is good). This minimalist approach is exactly what coach Luke Fickell wants. For a program that is heading to the Big 12 Conference next year and crashed the College Football Playoff last year, Higher Ground offers a higher calling back to Cincinnati’s blue-collar football roots.

During Fickell’s first season at Cincy, he took his team to Higher Ground for about five days. When there were problems installing a new field turf on campus the second year, they extended the stay to two weeks. Fickell liked what he saw.

“It kind of dawned on me all the things it could do for us,” he says. “There’s not much for the guys to do. How much they hang out, it’s just unique to the development of our program. It helps develop what it is we want to be.”

Toward that end, a banner hangs from the video tower that overlooks one end of the main practice field. It says, in large red and black letters, “Just Be Us.” That’s the mantra for the 2022 Bearcats.

Getting reacquainted with more of a hunter role than hunted is a place to start. Cincinnati has dominated the American Athletic Conference in recent years but was picked second (barely) behind Houston this season—something Fickell was quick to embrace. “I would pick them, too,” he said in July. For a program that historically has been in striver mode, last year was giddy but disorienting.

Fickell says the “Just Be Us” banner is one way to keep lofty expectations at bay / University of Cincinnati Athletics

“Winning, at a point, wasn’t good enough,” offensive coordinator Gino Guidugli says of the 2021 season. “You were winning games, and it wasn’t feeling like you won, due to the expectations. There was so much pressure. We’ve got to blow them out. We’ve got to score on every drive. These guys can’t be compared to last year. We’ve got to do it our way.”

Going 22–2 the previous two seasons, with appearances in the Peach and Cotton Bowls and a slew of draft picks, created a new perception. But this is a different team from those seasons.

“Everyone has this vision of who we are, especially after the last couple of years,” Fickell says. “We’re trying to remind our guys to just be us, and every year what that means is a little bit different. We’ve got to figure out what ‘us’ looks like.”

That’s why this year’s Higher Ground gathering was one of the most intense and urgent of Fickell’s six years on the job. There were a lot of open positions to fill on a team that had nine players drafted, five of which were in the top 100, including four-year starting quarterback Desmond Ridder. Combine that with a daunting opener at Arkansas on Sept. 3, and there was much work to be done as Cincinnati tries to craft a Just Be Us encore to its best season.

This was a time of discovery. And what the UC staff discovered at Higher Ground was plenty of hungry players, a welcome dynamic to Fickell.

Last year’s team had some star power to it—Ridder and cornerbacks Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner and Coby Bryant were surefire pros who ascended into the lineup shortly after arriving at Cincinnati. They had been the best players on the team for years, and their starting jobs were not in doubt. This August? It was time for players who had been incrementally improving, waiting their turn behind those stars.

“Sometimes the better leaders are the guys who were scout-team guys for a few years,” Fickell says. “Sometimes other guys can grasp onto them a little better, because they can identify with them. They’ve earned the respect of the team because of where they started.”

There are a few of those players in prominent positions this season. Starting middle linebacker Wilson Huber is a sixth-year senior with a real-estate license—he played tight end and special teams his first three seasons. Fellow sixth-year player Jabari Taylor has been a rotation player on the defensive line but now has locked down a starting spot. Fifth-year quarterback Ben Bryant backed up Ridder in 2019 and ’20 before transferring to Eastern Michigan, where he threw for more than 3,000 yards—then he came back to try to win the starting job this fall.

Josh Whyle (left) and Cincinnati earned their first College Football Playoff berth last season :: Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer/USA Today Network

Ben Bryant has been in a battle all preseason with sophomore Evan Prater, and the UC coaches aren’t tipping their hand as to who will start against Arkansas. They likely will keep the Razorbacks guessing until game day, because they’re drastically different players—Bryant is a pocket passer, while Prater is as much a runner as a thrower. Better to expand the Razorbacks’ preparation chores than to reduce them.

“Either one of those guys can lead us to a conference championship,” says Guidugli, himself a former standout Bearcats QB. “At the end of the day, that’s what we’re looking for out of that position. Whoever we go with, we’ve got to play to that guy’s strength. If Evan gets the nod, a lot of things Desmond Ridder did, he’s capable of doing. If Ben Bryant is in there, we’ll probably lean more on some of the [run-pass option] stuff in the run game. But both those guys are very capable.”

While battling for playing time, the Bearcats were simultaneously engaged in the usual grueling conditioning and weightlifting of August. One of the monumental tasks for the program’s support staff is transporting much of the weight and locker rooms from campus to Higher Ground and setting up shop in a large aluminum-sided building next to the practice field.

Cincinnati just completed a $4 million renovation of its locker room back home. When the team traveled back to campus for a Saturday scrimmage in Nippert Stadium earlier this month, they got to put it to use—then it was back to the Higher Ground hinterlands.

The staff finds creative ways to break up the routine. There have been guest speakers. Linemen and coaches had a punt-catching competition last week. One night, they called off a walk-through and instead loaded the team on buses for a 17-mile drive to Lawrenceburg to go to a movie. Another time, director of sports performance Brady Collins staged a WrestleMania night in the Higher Ground weight room, complete with a scaled-down wrestling ring.

“It looked like a professional event,” Collins says. “We had a ring announcer, a logo, our [strength and conditioning] interns wrestle each other.”

By Saturday night, the wrestling ring, weight room and locker room were all being deconstructed for the trip back to campus. The annual Higher Ground grind was over, and everyone was happy to have that behind them—coaches ready to reacquaint with families, players ready to see friends outside of football.

The trip to Arkansas loomed closer, the season coming into focus, September coming fast. The work done here, cloistered inside a circle of hills and seemingly a thousand miles from anywhere, will largely determine how Cincinnati’s encore to its best season turns out. 

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