Ada — Last year was one of dramatic change for the East Central University football program. And to hear head coach Tim McCarty’s take on things, the changes have just begun.

Coming off a first-ever Lone Star Conference North Division title in its final season as a member of the LSC, ECU will be a charter member of the new Great American Conference beginning this fall. In preparation for his team’s newest challenge, McCarty spent the winter huddling with his assistant coaches to ensure that his squad accomplishes everything possible during the third spring camp of his second tour as ECU’s head coach.

“We’ve got to get better at our overall excecution as a team,” said McCarty, who expects to welcome “about 75” players when spring practice opens Monday afternoon. “We have several areas of concern where we have to improve, and the glaring one is just overall team execution.

“During the offseason we looked at how BAD a job we did in certain areas,” he explained. Nothing was swept under the rug. Everything was examined.”

After starting last season 0-3 to extend a school-record 16-game losing streak that stretched back to the 2008 campaign, the Tigers won five of their final eight games to finish a respectable 5-6 overall and 5-1 in North Division play. McCarty, who coached ECU to its last winning season back in 2004 before leaving to become an assistant at Kansas State in December of 2005, earned North Coach of the Year honors for his team’s dramatic turnaround from its 0-11 distaster in 2009 (his first season back). 

“We finished last season on an upswing,” McCarty noted. “We were good enough to win the Lone Star North, although we feel like we weren’t a good football team yet by the standards we want to see.

“With that said, we took a nice jump last year, we’ve got players who have been in the program for a year or two and we have another exciting group of freshmen coming in (in August),” he added. “It’s going to be an exciting spring.”

Although a number of positions will be up for grabs over the next four weeks, one player who has a spot pretty well nailed down, barring injury, is senior quarterback Tyler Vanderzee. Like the rest of the team, the 6-6 Vanderzee closed 2010 with a flourish, finishing with over 2,400 yards passing — including a school-record 435 in a 36-33 victory at Texas A&M-Commerce in Week 10 that clinched the North title — in his first season as a Division II quarterback.

Although McCarty signed a pair of blue-chip high school signal-callers in Lawton product Cody Miller and Madill’s Spencer Bond, Vanderzee — one of 13 junior college transfers who contributed to ECU’s turnaround last season — will join former Sulphur standout Robert Thomas as the only quarterbacks in camps this spring. Thomas had a good spring last year before leaving school prior to the start of the fall semester but called McCarty and asked to return to the team.

“Tyler and Robert will take all the snaps this spring,” McCarty said. “Tyler is a senior coming back from what I would consider an average performance for him last fall. Right now he feels very comfortable in the offense, so he’s going to have a huge leg up.

“The Miller kid is obviously a great quarterback, and I’m sure he’ll come in and splash the water in the fall, but it’s Tyler’s senior year and it’s his job,” he added. “There’s no question that we’re going to be better at this position. No. 1, (Vanderzee) is comfortable, and No 2, he’s had a chance to study his performance from last year. That has to make him better.”

One position where things figure to be a lot more crowded this spring is at tailback. Senior-to-be Charles Opeseyitan, the team’s leading rusher in 2010, is back, along with Dominique Massengil and former Ada High standout Justin Todd, who both saw a lot of action as freshman last season. In addition, Miles Jackson — a redshirt in 2010 — will also be in camp.

And all four figure to be pressed for playing time by two of the plums from McCarty’s 2011 recruiting class — juco transfers Titus Mobley and Chad Winbush.

“Charlie O had a great second half of the season last year, Dominique and Justin are back for their sophomore year, Miles Jackson has great speed, and both of our juco signees are great players,” said McCarty, who is hoping to add some juice to a running game that generated fewer yards than any in the LSC between 2006 and 2010. “We’ve got six running backs coming into spring ball. The four returning have areas they need to get better at, and our new guys get a chance to show us who they are.

“It’s always a plus if you can run the ball effectively, and I think from this group of running backs, someone will emerge who will be able to do that for us.”

While Vanderzee and the running game are expected to make a quantum leap forward in 2011, McCarty also added some zing to his receiving corps with some exciting recruits, and he will return four of five starters from last year’s offensive line, including North Lineman of the Year Carlos Savala. That should translate into more weapons offensively than McCarty has had during any of his previous four seasons at ECU.

“We’ve got to be able to come out of the spring and feel good about the running back position as a group — we’ve got depth there and we feel like we have the talent there, but we’re not handing out free starting positions at East Central,” McCarty noted. “There was a time when you could almost say that, but that party’s over. We’ve got some very healthy competition for a starting job at that position.

“We need to be able to throw the ball down the field — that’s another area of concern we established with our offseason evaluations,” he said. “Obviously we want to be able to run the ball, but at the same time we want to throw the ball effectively. My assistants have done a superior job of getting players in here who can make plays for us, and the kids we have brought in see a great opportunity to come be a part of something special. It is exciting that people can sense that, and because of that we can move this program forward — and faster.”

Before surrendering over 700 yards in a meltdown at West Texas A&M (a 52-21 loss) in the season finale, the ECU defense was the most efficient in the North and led the entire conference in interceptions, sacks, turnovers and turnover margin. Most of the key members of that unit will be in camp, including All-American defensive end Armonty Bryant and another first-team All-LSC performer, cornerback Dontae Smith.

“We’re going to be a lot better on that side of the ball,” McCarty predicted. “I think in our secondary we’re as good as anybody, and I think our defensive line has the potential to be very good. Our linebackers have to be more adaptive to what we do defensively. The linebacker corps has to marry the back end and front end of our defense.

“We were a big-play defense last year, but at times we weren’t consistent,” he added. “Last year, if our offense did something good, our defense didn’t always take advantage of it; if our defense did a good job, our offense didn’t always take advantage of it. We made big plays to keep teams out of the end zone, but we have to be more consistent.”

Despite expectations for his team to improve on one of the most successful and surprising seasons in school history, McCarty said there won’t be as much pressure heading into this spring as there was a year ago.

“There’s always more pressure coming off an O-fer,” he said. “We’ve got so much work to do, I’m always questioning how we’re going to get it all done.

“We’ve got great team chemistry,” McCarty said. “(Strength and conditioning coordinator) Zac Womack has done a great job this offseason. Our team doesn’t look like the team we had last year. These kids are bigger, stronger, faster. Zac has transformed our football team.”

McCarty said last season’s success has given his club a little bit of a swagger that hasn’t been a part of ECU football for a number of years, but he said confidence alone won’t be enough to make the Tigers a power in their new conference.

“Confidence comes from what you’ve been able to demonstrate, and we demonstrated last year that we could win some ball games,” he noted. “But the reality is that we’re not a good football team yet — at least not to my standards.

“We got a little taste of success last year, but we were by no means a good football team by what we as coaches define as a good football team,” McCarty said. “If we can take this team and ratchet it up a little more, we have a chance to become a decent team. We do have some exciting players, but at the same time we still have so much on the table that has not been done. There’s a ton of opportunity for this football team.”

ECU will be on a Monday-through-Thursday schedule this spring, with practice (which is open to the public) scheduled to begin each day at 3:20 p.m. The Tigers will practice in full pads for the first time on Wednesday, and camp will conclude with the annual Orange and White Game at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 23.

To add to the excitement of the coming season for ECU’s female fans, McCarty and his coaches will host “ECU Women’s Football 101” in conjunction with the spring game.

“People always want to learn more about football, so we’re going to give the ladies in our community full access to our program for three or four hours that day (beginning at 9 a.m.),” McCarty said. “They will be able to meet with me, Coach (Rashad) Jackson (the team’s offensive coordinator), Coach (Justin) Deason (the defensive coordinator) and some of our players.

“We’ll teach them about the rules of the game and what happens out on the field,” he added. “We’ll also have a luncheon for them with door prizes. We’ll try to give them a basic understanding of football, so they might know more than their husbands when they’re done.”