Orange Close Fort Drum Week with Paintball

The final day at Fort Drum gave the Orange an opportunity to get away from some of the structure they've had this week and let loose on the paintball field.

Syracuse held its annual paintball tournament to conclude the week's festivities and ended it with a game of the coaches and military personnel against the seniors, with the student-athletes coming out on top.

"We just wanted to light the coaches up the best we could," said senior defensive lineman Robert Welsh. "To be honest, if we got hit we were going to stay in and keep shooting."

Senior linebacker Cameron Lynch took the opportunity to get some payback on the coaches.

"We saw the coaches come behind us and all got a good shot on coach Lea my linebackers coach," Lynch said. "We had fun out there man, it was a great way to go off for our seniors and a great way to end our time at Fort Drum."

One of the highlights of the day amongst the team was the play of defensive line coach Tim Daoust, who ran through a wooden barricade to collapse the hiding spot of a number of seniors, including Welsh, who subsequently eliminated Daoust.

"It felt good, I'm not going to lie," Welsh said. "We were jawing a bit before the game so when he ran over the barricade that I was under I knew it had to be him, so I got up and kept shooting. I think I emptied my paintball gun on coach Daoust so that was great."

For Welsh, the day was a great conclusion of his third trip to Fort Drum.

"We learned a lot that we can bring back to Syracuse and bring back to football," Welsh said. "It's a great learning experience to work as a team and it's great for leadership qualities as well. You learn how to be a leader. Guys who may not have been a leader learn how to become leaders so it's a great experience."

The Orange will now pack up and bring camp back to Syracuse for the final two weeks before the season opener.

Cuse Gives Back

After another morning of learning from the 2^nd Brigade Combat Team, Thursday night was Cuse's chance to give back to the Fort Drum community.

The Orange held their annual kids clinic from the youth football players of Fort Drum before scrimmaging in front of the soldiers and their families.

"This is the second year that I've been up here for and it was a great experience for all of them," said Fort Drum Mighty Mights' coach Charles Crawford. "It's great for them to see the older guys at it because our kids come out of this and say 'I want to go to college' and 'I want to be like them' so they're coming up and being role models so that's a good thing."

The clinic consisted of the young players rotating in groups through drills set up by each position group. The offensive line's group where the pop warner players were able to hit the blocking shields held by the Syracuse student-athletes were the favorite drill of the Mighty Mights.

"The hitting was definitely their favorite," Crawford said. "When they got with the linemen and they were knocking them down and the cheering and the motivational stuff afterwards – that was great for them."

While this was the Orange's opportunity to give back to their hosts for the week, head coach Scott Shafer thinks they once again benefitted from the experience.

"Once again great experience here at Fort Drum," Shafer said. "The kids camp was wonderful. Seeing those little pee-wee kids running around and our kids spending time with them was great."

Syracuse will close its time at Fort Drum tomorrow morning with one final activity with the soldiers – a paintball match.

Top Articles from Aug. 14 on the Orange:

Syracuse.com: Williams Shines and six other observations from the scrimmage

Orange Fizz: Syracuse Can Only Go Up from Here

Cuse Confidential: Orange Enjoying Fort Drum Trip

ESPN: Davis Impacts Syracuse Off the Field as Well

Daily Orange: Broyld Looks Like a Go-To Option and Other Scrimmage Observations
Daily Orange: Shafer Addresses Kids After Clinic