By Matt Noonan

Prior to their first practice of the season on Monday, Williams College head coach Aaron Kelton provided a few thoughts about his second season with the Ephs, which concluded with a 5-3 record.

Kelton, who enters his third season with the Ephs, had entered the previous season coming off an undefeated campaign in 2010. During that particular year, Kelton not only helped Williams finish their schedule with a perfect record for the seventh time in the program’s history, but also guided the Ephs to NESCAC and Little Three championship.

Below is Kelton’s reflection on his second season with the Ephs:

“It was a very disappointing year in terms of what our expectations are each year, but there were a lot of real positives that came out of that experience and I think they will carry over for our team this year. As I recap last season, there were a number of things that I felt really affected our play. The first being coming into camp and having [Hurricane Irene] wash out our fields, which really put us in a bind because we weren’t able to workout on a football field. We were inside for part of it, and we were basically on a 50-yard field for the first five-to-six weeks of the season, so from preseason through the first four weeks of our season, so that I think really affected our play because it didn’t allow us to do some of the things that we like to do and being able to scrimmage and throw our vertical game, as well as having space and proper spacing on the field because it wasn’t a regulation field, but we don’t make excuses for that. We didn’t come out to play [right away] and I didn’t prepare them well enough to face that adversity [because] I thought that we got off to a slow start defensively and part of that was because of camp. We were a little bit nicked-up, so our rotations were off a little bit, but we came on at certain points in the year and were able to turn it on and we faltered at the end, which was very disappointing for us. [The class of 2012] was very talented and most of those guys have moved on. They had great experiences here, and we wish them all the best in their futures as professionals, and now our focus is getting on these young guys that we’ve got running around for us.”