Hetherman Focused On Fundamentals

HARRISONBURG — Corey Hetherman will yell, but not without instruction.

“He’s very detailed and I’ll give him that,” James Madison senior defensive lineman Ron’Dell Carter said of Hetherman, the Dukes’ first-year defensive coordinator and ends coach who constantly emphasizes the importance of fundamentals.

Throughout an individual drill during Thursday’s practice, Hetherman used a forceful tone yet still pointed out what each defensive lineman did correctly or incorrectly while they went through the task. He didn’t yell just to be loud. The players lined up under a chute, had to get out of it while keeping a wide enough base to not hit a straight plank under their feet and then punch the bag held by a teammate on the other side.

“Strike off the ball,” Hetherman yelled as defensive end John Daka worked through the drill.

“Good job,” Hetherman said to defensive tackle Adeeb Atariwa as he delivered a blow to the pad on the other side. “Excellent! But roll your hips!”

Hetherman has communicated with his players that way during each drill he’s led since joining coach Curt Cignetti’s staff at JMU this past December, and Carter said it’s appreciated. Hetherman talks the same way to the projected starters like Carter as he does some of the players trying to earn playing time like defensive tackle Tony Thurston, who could be a backup to Atariwa this fall.

“When you watch Coach Hetherman’s drills, he’s punishing us,” Carter said. “But it’s for a reason. Obviously, he wants you to still keep your technique while you’re tired because it’s easy to not handle technique when you’re winded.

“He’s very particular about what he wants, how he wants it and he’s very particular about that. I respect it. It’s clear he knows what he wants and that it works, so we’ve got to listen to him. We’ve got to open up, listen to what he’s saying.”

Before the start of training camp, Hetherman said one of his goals was to help as many defensive linemen make progress as possible.

“In a perfect world, you’d like to be eight or nine deep,” Hetherman said. “Right now, we’ll find out if we can get there. In a perfect world, we’d have some guys eating up the reps like 40, 50 reps a game and then some guys that play in that 20-to-30 [reps] batch and then others that fit into that 8-10-12-reps-a-game role. Now we need to stay healthy and we need to be smart with that as we get through fall camp here, but we need to develop some guys if we’re going to get to that depth.”

The accolades have rolled in for James Madison right tackle Liam Fornadel.

He was named a STATS FCS Preseason All-American and to the Preseason All-Colonial Athletic Association team last month, but to him not much has changed.

“There’s a lot of footwork stuff I want to get crisp,” Fornadel said. “I want to get a lot better than I was in the spring. There were a lot of things I felt like I could’ve improved on.”

And the way Fornadel said he will try to do that is by continuing to practice. He said he’s only missed one practice in his entire college career – it came in his freshman season after suffering a concussion in JMU’s 2017 FCS semifinal win over South Dakota State.

“[Offensive line coach Damian Wroblewski] preaches the best ability is availability,” Fornadel said. “So I’m trying to make myself available to this team and try to continue to improve and get better to help everyone else.”

Dukes coach Curt Cignetti said he likes Fornadel’s attitude.

“I thought he had a real solid spring,” Cignetti said. “We’re expecting him to be a really good player and he approaches his work in a businesslike sense. You know what you’re going to get from him every single day.”

James Madison wide receiver Dillon Spalding said an injury has forced him to leave the team.

“I tore muscles in my hip,” Spalding said. “And I am no longer allowed to play football, the doctor said.”

Spalding transferred from West Virginia to JMU this past May, so his time with the Dukes only consisted of summer workouts and less than a week of training camp.

“I have been having ongoing hip issues and I finally tore it,” Spalding said. “And the doctor told me I was no longer allowed to play football.”

Spalding said he’s going to continue in school at JMU.

At WVU, Spalding was redshirted last year after suffering a season-ending ankle injury in his only August camp with the Mountaineers. The Lorton native was a three-star prospect and rated as the 17th-best prospect in the Commonwealth for the Class of 2018 by Rivals.com coming out of South County High School.