Chris Fraser needed help going into 2009. The Charlottesville coach needed his team to take some responsibility. So he approached his seniors in the offseason looking for the two to take over the leadership roles on the team. The Black Knights needed some field generals, and just a couple of weeks into August, it looks like Xavier Porter is more than ready to answer that call. Fraser appointed the seniors as the team disciplinarians and during Charlottesville’s round robin scrimmage with Culpeper and Covenant on Friday, Porter showed that he was willing to lead both vocally and physically with his play.
“I think [us becoming leaders] takes a lot of pressure off of the coaching staff because they’ve already got so many other responsibilities,” Porter said. “I think a lot of the guys, if they hear criticism from the seniors, they’ll be able to relate to it a little better.”
Porter played particularly sharp against both squads. He put on a show at cornerback as he picked off a pair of passes but also showed his breakaway speed on a long touchdown coming on a stretch play to the left side of the field.
“We’ve always known he’s been talented,” Fraser said. “He and I had a long talk in April and since then he’s done exactly what we were hoping he’d do.”
After a tough first year, Fraser described his team’s offseason as ‘outstanding’ and it was evident during Friday’s scrimmage that Charlottesville is getting things headed in the right direction, especially defensively. However, there’s still plenty of room for improvement, and Porter will be the first to tell you about it.
“I saw a lot of things I liked and a lot of things I didn’t like,” Porter said. “We’re young and still in the beginning stages and we’ve got a lot of room to grow and get better.”
Porter feels more confident in that CHS has started to fix some problems that stuck out last year — namely the secondary — but he still thinks there is plenty of work to be done.
“The secondary, from what I can see, has gotten a lot better,” Porter said. “I think that’s the strong point of our team right now. On offense, we didn’t move the ball really well when we first got out there and we need to improve on that. I would say it’s been ‘kind of sort of’ good in practice so that’s what we need to work on most.”
