GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — "There is a commitment to excellence here. From the minute you drive on campus from the professors to the grounds crew to everyone on campus. Everyone wants to be the very best and you can see that. When you walk in our gymnasium there are 11 national championship banners so that's the standard here," said Trent Figg.
Just seven months in to his job as the head football coach at Calvin University, Trent Figg and his staff have made huge strides to help build the first ever football program at the school.
"The word overwhelming never really crossed my mind. I mean there's literally a list of five years from now, five months from now, five days from now, five minutes from now of things that need to get done. Getting it off the ground is a really heavy lift but the support here, my athletic director. The president, the provost are awesome," said Figg.
Since January the Knights have ordered helmets, shoulder pads, built a new football suite with offices and have put finishing touches on their practice field. And work on their stadium, set to debut in 2024, is also in the works.
For Coach Figg, his roster is full of local talent. It includes about 42 true freshmen, 10 transfers, and 10 students who were already enrolled at Calvin.
"West Michigan is so important to us, really the entire state of Michigan is important to us for several reasons. One of them being retention, right? We want kids that want to be at Calvin. And when you're starting a program we're asking 62 kids to come this fall and we aren't going to play a game. It's a really unique situation. They're going to practice, they're going to train just like they were a freshman at any other college football team. But they're going to get the individualized attention of our coaching staff," said Figg.
One of those freshman coming to Calvin this fall is Whitehall all-state lineman, Winton Napier.
"At first Calvin wasn't even on my radar at all. Like I didn't even think about going there even a little bit. But a couple of my buddies invited me to go on a visit with them and I ended up falling in love with it. Especially Coach Figg, he's the main reason I ended up going there. Just his passion for the game and I could tell how much he cared for me. It just was a lot different than any other visit I was on," said Napier.
Winton was the first ever football commit for Calvin and can't wait to start training next month.
"That's definitely really exciting being a part of the first class. Not many people get to say they're one of the first people to be on a team for a college anyway. It's exciting and I guess a lot of nerves going on with that too because we'll be really young for the first few years so we're going to have to pick it up a little bit. But I'm not worried about competing with the other teams but i'm sure we'll do good," said Napier
