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In college football, the summer is the bridge between spring practices and fall camp and the new look Troy Trojans are enjoying a productive summer session thus far.

Head coach Gerad Parker is a new face in the program, as are many of his coaches and players, and the team has been using the summer as a chance to get to know each other.

“We’ve completed four weeks of being around the guys and those four weeks have been wonderful,” Parker said. “Troy is a place where we support our best asset, which is the players. We got four weeks with our players and we didn’t do any official visits or travel to any camps. We spent our time with our players. That’s been huge for us to get around our guys and all these new faces. It’s been a hard grind but a very good four weeks.”

Some of that time was spent at Montgomery Whitewater as the Trojans fought rapids together.

“It was a teambuilding exercise. I had never been and I think it was one of the most rewarding trips I’ve ever taken in coaching,” said Parker. “You had six guys in a raft with one instruction, so it kind of parallels the type of ‘rapids’ we will face. That was a really cool experience.”

Following the spring, Parker’s staff went to work filling holes in a number of positions across the roster; key losses from the 2023 Sun Belt Champions.

“It will take us some time here to continue to figure this thing out but I will say our staff did such a great job of adding talent acquisitions, which is one of our main jobs,” Parker emphasized. “I feel like we feel way better than we did in December when I took the job. We all have a clear understanding of what we lost from last year’ team. Now, with a full roster, we feel better about things. We haven’t put on pads or helmets yet but going into this we certainly feel optimistic about everyone that’s been brought in from the transfer portal and (junior college) transfers and our incoming freshmen.”

Over the coming weeks The Messenger will breakdown Troy’s football roster with Parker as a preview and outlook on the 2024 season.