Lincoln players compete during spring scrimmage

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out football in the spring is much different than what it looks like in the fall.

But the points were hammered home as the Lincoln University Blue Tigers wrapped up their 2015-16 school year with their Spring Game on Saturday at Dwight T. Reed Stadium.

Take the goals for the workouts, which are less about fine-tuning any gameplans and more about one purpose.

“Spring went great — no one got hurt,” Lincoln head coach Mike Jones said with a laugh. “You want to get better, but you don’t want anybody to get injured — that’s the whole thing about spring.”

Then comes the other main aim of this time of year.

“Make sure you’re eligible — that’s the thing, first and foremost,” Jones said. “Friday the 13th, that’s a bad (darn) day, but Friday the 13th is the last day of school. So we’ve got to get to May 13 with our grades in order. … From now until the end of school, it’s all about academics, making sure they finish the spring strong.”

Finally, the Spring Game failed to resemble a real game for long portions, starting with the way it began. The situational scrimmage began with a punt — from the offense’s 2-yard line, no less — and featured another punt and a kickoff in the six plays.

Eventually, the White (offense) mounted three sustained drives to start the roughly hour-long scrimmage. The first ended with the ball being turned over on downs, the second was capped by a pretty leaping touchdown reception by Deonte Latimer, and the third ended with a lost fumble.

Five drives then started at the Blue team’s 20-yard line, with the White going 1-of-3 on field-goal attempts on drives 1, 3 and 4. Also included were a wide-receiver pass from Bryson Winfrey to Dennis Jackson for a 20-yard score and another wide-receiver pass from Winfrey that was intercepted by Brandon Ward, one of two picks for him on the day.

The Blue team came up with several sacks in the contest, with Noah Johnson, Elex Harris Jr. and Kadesh Reeves featuring prominently in the pass rush.

“Everybody competed well,” Jones said, noting that has been a point of emphasis this spring. “… We lost a lot of guys, a lot of seniors. The guys have done a great job this spring of getting better and competing for a job, because everybody is looking to win a job.

“It’s time to pass the torch. Two years ago we had a great senior group … and they passed the torch to these guys here and now it’s time for these guys, who were freshmen and sophomores, to step up and be good football players.”

Jones said the Blue Tigers will be better off in the fall thanks to some growing pains in 2015, when Lincoln went 1-10.

“We’re going to be better up front,” he said. “The guys who started the majority of the season, you look at the last seven games and we started four freshmen and a junior-college transfer we expected to redshirt. All those guys got great experience and got baptized by fire.”

Saturday also marked a youth football camp put on in the morning at the stadium.

“We had about 85 kids this time,” Jones said. “All the players run it — the coaches don’t do anything. They run the whole camp and they did a great job.

“We have it every year before our Spring Game and it’s getting bigger and better every year.”