Shane Beamer Touts Gamecocks' "Unbelievable Summer"

South Carolina's Football team is set to begin Fall camp tomorrow, but Shane Beamer made it a point to commend his team for their work over the past few months.

Steve Spurrier once put it best when he talked to the media in a gaggle interview during Fall camp 2015: "Everybody's undefeated at this time. Everything's going great." Shane Beamer prefaced his opening statement at his Thursday presser by acknowledging that every coach will talk that way leading into Fall camp, but according to the third-year head man, the Gamecocks made perceivable progress throughout the Summer months.

"Our team had an unbelievable summer - The way they worked, their work ethic throughout the Summer, that's probably the fewest number of accountability issues that we've had since I've been here," Beamer said. 

South Carolina is replacing a bunch of experience from last year's team, evidenced by the fact that they return only 55 percent of their production from last year's squad. The fourth lowest total in the SEC heading into this Fall, according to ESPN's Bill Connelly. However, the Gamecocks' 2023 class has come in with a business-like approach and has acclimated well to college life both on and off the field.

"A lot of times you worry about freshmen coming in and how well do they adjust, whether they got here in January or at the end of May, and regardless of when they got here, our freshmen class has been fantastic as far as what they've done to contribute to this team in a short period of time."

Beamer then gave immense credit to Luke Day and his strength and conditioning staff, along with the Gamecocks' new nutrition staff, led by Yemi Rodriguez and Jennifer Goldstein, stating that both staffs have made immense contributions to the team this Summer. Relating it to the team, Shane made it clear that a good portion of his team has gotten stronger and faster since the team last took the field on April 15th.

"We had multiple players on our team who increased their max on the squat [by] 100 pounds just from May to last week - The average [max] squat on our team went up 50 pounds. [With] bench press, the average gain was 24 pounds per player. We had 31 players this Summer that hit new top speeds," Beamer lamented. "And a lot of these guys that I'm talking about who have gotten stronger and faster are older guys, it's not just the young guys." 

It's taken almost three whole years, but it appears the Gamecocks are beginning to resemble an SEC from a physical and athleticism standpoint across their entire roster.

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