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Patriot League Football Media Day Notes

HAMILTON — Colgate University Fred '50 and Marilyn Dunlap Head Football Coach Curt Fitzpatrick, senior wide receiver Treyvhon Saunders, and junior linebacker Trooper Price met the media during the Patriot League's annual virtual Media Day on Thursday afternoon.

HAMILTON — Colgate University Fred '50 and Marilyn Dunlap Head Football Coach Curt Fitzpatrick, senior wide receiver Treyvhon Saunders, and junior linebacker Trooper Price answered questions from the media during the Patriot League's annual virtual Media Day on Thursday afternoon. 

The trio highlighted the first six months under Fitzpatrick, working with a new coaching staff and establishing a foundation that embodies the culture at Colgate, building excitement for the 2025 season, and offering a glimpse of what you might see out of the Fitzpatrick-led Raiders squad. Coach Fitzpatrick Opening Statement

Thank you everyone for being here today. We're excited for the season ahead. We had a great spring followed by a great summer. Our players have really embraced our new coaching staff, our philosophy, and we're ready to get back together next week to start our journey in 2025. We have great leadership on this team, and our guys are doing a great job building the culture of our program. I couldn't be more excited about the future of Colgate Football. 

Trooper, can you talk about Coach Warner, the defensive coordinator, what the defense is going to look like, and how things have been going so far? 

Trooper Price: Coach Warner is an exciting guy. He came in on the first day, set the tone and said we're going to be runners and hitters. That's what we plan to be. We've got a lot of unproven guys on our defense, and I think we're really excited to prove ourselves – me included. We are going to bring a great scheme every time, bringing pressure in different ways, and I'm excited to go through a full game with Coach Warner play-calling. He's more excited than anyone I know to just start camp and get after it. 

Treyvhon, can you talk about your early conversations with Coach Fitzpatrick and how things are going leading into this season?

Treyvhon Saunders: Since we started, everything has been genuine and authentic for the coaches from us, a complete buy-in. We're focusing on inputs, not outputs right now. We're focusing on every single moment, every single day. Going to a camp, we're looking to attack day-by-day.

Treyvhon, how would you describe your team's culture this year?

Treyvhon Saunders: We're all together. This team is very bonded, whether it's on the field or off the field, we're always hanging out with each other. We're all bought in. Everybody wants to work hard, everybody wants to play hard. Everybody wants to be on the field. There's only 11 guys, but everyone is hungry to be on the field. That's the culture that we want. 

Treyvhon, what are some of your personal goals this year?

Treyvhon Saunders: There's a lot, All-American included of course. Patriot League All-Conference. There's a lot, but honestly I'm really focused on team goals. We want to win and that's the biggest thing this year. 

Trooper, entering your junior year, have you started to take on more of a leadership role this year?

Trooper Price: Yeah, I had the great pleasure of playing with and learning from some great players in the past – guys like Christian Sweeney, Cole Kozlowski, Tyler Flick, so many great guys who paid attention to the details of the game and showed me what it meant to play linebacker at Colgate. This year, I'm stoked to prove who I am as a linebacker and as a football player. I love everybody on our team – I sense this feeling that our guys have a lot to prove. There's not a lot expected of us, at least from the Patriot League, being picked seventh in the preseason poll, but we expect a lot out of our guys within the program. We expect to compete with the best. Moving forward with my leadership role now, that is what we will expect every day during practices and games. 

Trooper, how would you describe yourself as a football player? 

Trooper Price: Very passionate. I grew up in a football family and that's pretty much everything I know. Every single time I'm on the field you'll see my passion. You're going to get every single ounce of me every time I'm on the football field. It's the best time of my life being on the football field and I think that's what you'll see when I'm out there. 

I've covered Patriot League football for a long time, Colgate never shies away from a tough schedule. Do you guys relish the challenge of that early schedule? That seems to be part of the DNA at Colgate. 

Treyvhon Saunders: Throw it all at us. We're going to go for it. In our minds, we don't look at teams as opponents. We go against ourselves and every week we're trying to attack it. Our dream is to win the Patriot League. It doesn't matter who's out there or what's out there, we're going to compete. 

A little over a month away until you kick off the season at Andy Kerr. Is it fast approaching, how quick has the off-season been? How has the process been, leading up to opening kickoff?

Coach Fitzpatrick: Things have flown by. It goes by fast, but you try to stay in the moment and stay focused day to day. I think that's what our players deserve and what we need. So, you know, it's gone by fast, but we're prepared. I'm excited for next week and so we can get out on the field and continue the progress that we made through spring practice. I feel like we got so much better from the start of spring practice. When you have a new staff, there's so much, so much communication that has to happen. If our team on spring practice number one, played the team on spring practice number 15, you know, we just made so much progress over that time and continued to make progress this summer. Our players are working hard. It feels like I was hired yesterday. Time has flown since then, but certainly we're ready and eager to get started to go out there and compete like Trey and Trooper mentioned in their answers.

Can you talk about the personal connections you've been able to build with your players so far? 

Coach Fitzpatrick: I've made great connections. It's one thing to have a player in my office and get to chat with them and get to know about them and their families. There's so much to learn. They're trying to learn about me. I'm trying to learn about them. But as you go over time, seeing who they are as students, seeing who they are as competitors in the weight room, you know, in the strength program, on the practice field, I've gotten to learn a lot about them in that way. Small interactions daily. We talk in our program about positive interactions or what we call touches. Positive interactions are contagious. And so my goal is as a head coach, it's hard for me to have, you know, a 30-minute meeting every week with every player in our program, but I can give a high-five or a quick pat on the back. These small, quick interactions add up over time. I love the passion that our players have for the game. I love the blend at Colgate between academics and athletics. And I hope that the players sense my passion for the game and how I love to teach the game. I love the detail of football. Coaching technique in some of the small things. I get pure joy in that. And that's why I'm so excited to get out to practice next week so we can keep working on all those small things that make football teams great. 

This might be a hard one, what is one word to describe for your team this year?

I'm gonna use a phrase: Input-focused. That's something I talk to our team about a lot. These guys are really buying into that. You can't focus on the outside circumstances. We have to focus on our vision and be an input-focused program, focusing on ourselves. We know we have a challenging schedule. Colgate has never shied away from playing challenging games. This year is no different this year with Monmouth, Villanova, and Syracuse to start the season. We've got to focus on being our best and whatever the score is on the scoreboard, it's going to be what it is, but we have to focus on being the best version of Colgate that we can be.

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