The countdown to the 2023 season opener is coming up rather quickly when the University of New Haven set to welcome Frostburg State to town on Aug. 31 for the first night football game at DellaCamera Stadium.

Before the attention turns to meeting up with a talented Frostburg State team, head coach Chris Pincince and his staff still need to go from the evaluation process to game preparation mode.

Having 139 players in camp, many suiting up for the Chargers for the first time does make things a bit challenging. The team was split into two groups to give all the players the chance to show what they can do. It is a good problem to have with players capable of helping New Haven win at every position on the field.

After a recent scrimmage, Pincince is looking to finalize the pecking order so the Chargers can begin to prepare for the season opener.

"I think we are a talented group of kids," Pincince said. "We have a lot of kids and it is hard to narrow it down. We've got some older guys. We've got some younger guys who are a little ways away from playing college football."

New Haven brings back all-conference running back Christopher Ais (Stoughton, Mass./Stoughton), receiver Dev Holmes (Troy, N.Y./Troy), tight end Kevin Foelsch (Ramsey, N.J./Ramsey), offensive lineman Xavier Bryson (Mechanicsville, Va./Hanover / Fork Union Military Acad.), defensive lineman Jack Quander (Gainsville, Va./Patriot) and linebacker Damon Burton, Jr.

However, quarterback Connor Degenhardt (Westford, Mass./Westford Academy) is gone after two productive seasons, as are three of the top four tacklers and some veteran offensive linemen.

The roster looks much different than the one from the spring with a large freshman class being joined by plenty of transfers.

"More than half of the roster have never practiced here before, never played here," Pincince said.

That has put more pressure on the returning players, many of them former transfers, to lead the way both on the field and off.

"Right now, you find the culture, you find who is going to dig down deep and go for it," Burton said. "As the older guys in the group, we have to set the standard from Day 1 to Day 30, the energy is standard and we have to maintain that and that has pretty much been the goal that we have all been preaching."

There is more than enough returning players on defense with Burton joined by fellow linebackers Joe Vitale (North Haven, Conn./North Haven) and Devin O'Malley (Pawtucket, R.I./St. Rafael Academy), Quander, defensive backs Giye Jenkins (West Orange, N.J./Seton Hall Prep) and Christian Ais (Stoughton, Mass./Stoughton) as well as defensive linemen Tahlee Bailey (Somerset, N.J./Rahway), Chisom Okoro (Cheshire, Conn./Cheshire) and Jaysen Triunfer (Paterson, N.J./John F. Kennedy) among the top returnees.

"We are trying to mesh well," Quander said. "We lost some guys on defense and I think we definitely found some guys that can fill those holes.

"I feel like there is a different energy in practices than we had in past years. This is my third year here. I'm integrated into the defense and feel like I know it like the back of my hand and know how we practice. I feel like these practices have been a lot more heated and everybody is coming together and playing hard. The energy level is a big thing for me and you can see if kind of falls off when it gets to the dog days of camp, halfway through everybody is getting tired. It is going well."

There aren't many Division II teams that can boast of a running back-wide receiver-tight end trio to rival Ais, Holmes and Foelsch.

Plenty of receivers have been added via the transfer portal and three transfers join Jack Chandler (Oviedo, Fla./Hagerty) in the quarterback competition.

There was a stretch when five quarterbacks were getting work. For the sake of a fair competition, all of them have been getting reps with the first-team offense.

Stony Brook transfer Joshua Zamot has moved to receiver so that leaves Chandler, Merrimack transfer Francis Esquivel, UCLA and Independence Community College transfer Parker McQuarrie and Boston College transfer Daelen Menard vying for the No. 1 QB job.

"I would rather have one guy and have a battle for the backup, but that is not the case," Pincince said. "The three kids who came in here during the summer deserve an opportunity to showcase their skills."

The veteran pass catchers have been working hard with each of the quarterbacks and like what they have seen.

"It is exciting," Holmes said. "We are just trying to give them every tip we can give them and be positive leaders."

This will be the third season that Foelsch and Holmes will be playing together and that will benefit whoever wins the starting quarterback job.

"I will miss playing with Dev because he is one of the best players I have ever played with," Foelsch said. "He is electric out there. We complement each other really well. He is a really good deep threat and I kind of get those shallow routes in the red zone. You have to pick one of us and I think defenses have a hard time figuring out who to cover."

New Haven was picked to win the Northeast-10 Conference title. The goals are a little higher than that. New Haven finished 8-3 a season ago with the three losses by a total of 11 points. The memories of those losses helped motivate the returning players since they walked off the field in Shepherdstown, W. Va. following a 16-13 loss to Shepherd in the Division II playoffs.

"It has lit a fire that we are almost there," Burton said. "What is the next step to get us to where we need to be? That is what we are focused on. We have to be more disciplined. We have to be more locked in, we have to have more chemistry. All of those things from last season, we learned from our mistakes. You can tell at practice or during the lifts, the locker room culture is growing us closer. I feel like it is only going to make us play better together because we trust each other, we are way more comfortable around each other."