It all started with strong winter workouts, and now the Grand Valley State University football team is prepping to culminate the 2010 season with a deep playoff run.

With new players at several key positions and a new head coach, the year was supposed to be full of growing pains for a historically dominant program. There have been a few bumps along the way, but the team riddled with question marks at the beginning of the season has barely skipped a beat on the way to its record sixth-straight GLIAC Championship and 10th consecutive playoff appearance.

“It was important in kind of a little bit of a transitional year that we keep up the reputation this program has,” said GVSU head coach Matt Mitchell. “The bottom line is that we’re used to making the playoffs, this is 10 years in a row that we’ve made it, and keeping the conference championship here – the outright conference championship here – that was important in this first year.”

Despite losing the team’s quarterback, two running backs and the leading wide receiver from a year ago, GVSU’s offense has had little trouble putting points on the board this season. The Lakers are averaging 38.9 points per game, and they scored 28 or more points in all but one contest during the regular season.

“In the winter when we were conditioning all together – those night-time conditionings – that built a lot of trust with other people, knowing what we could do together,” said senior quarterback Kyle McMahon, one of several newcomers to the team. “Everybody was seeing the kind of talent that was going around on the team, and so everyone knew that we were capable enough to be a good team this year.”

The defense, which suffered a huge loss when senior All-American defensive end Danny Richard went down with a knee injury before the season, rebounded after giving up 103 points in the first three games. GVSU has not allowed an opponent to score more than 21 points since.

“Going out there at the beginning of the year, you really had no playing time with the people,” said senior cornerback Rob Carlisle. “We were starting three freshman back there (in the defensive backfield). So it was like, you really didn’t know if they were going to be in the right spot, you really don’t know if they know what they’re doing … Now I think that we’re starting to begin to trust each other. We believe in each other that we are going to be in the right spot.”

Mitchell, who is the first coach in school history to reach 10 wins in his first season, acknowledged his own growth as well.

As the team heads into Saturday’s opening-round playoff match against Mines, McMahon said it is the little things the Lakers need to correct in order to continue their success.

“We had a couple of plays just this last week against Saginaw that could have changed the game,” he said.

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