Since arriving at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga four years ago, Ailym Ford has been working his way up the list of all-time leading rushers for the Mocs, and the 5-foot-9, 215-pound running back enters his senior season at No. 3 and with the career record a legitimate goal.
In similar fashion, the UTC football program, which opened its 2023 preseason camp Thursday, has been climbing a figurative mountain of its own during that time.
It's a program largely devoid of championship history. A program that has been largely propped up by a great run from 2013-16, which ignores a 33-80 record from 2000-09 and a 31-30 record since that four-year run. It's a program people within the university once thought should be cut because of ineptitude.
That's the program former UTC player and assistant Rusty Wright took over when he returned to Chattanooga as head coach in December 2018, the one that Ford joined around the same time, the one that a few months later added edge rusher Jay Person, a Bradley Central High School graduate and Appalachian State transfer.
Russ Huesman, another UTC alum, was head coach from 2009 to 2016 before leaving for Richmond. While his final four seasons with the Mocs yielded a 36-16 mark with three Southern Conference titles and as many trips to the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, he faced his share of gripes halfway through his UTC tenure at 23-21 with some questioning his ability to lead the program.
Four years into Wright's tenure? His record is 22-17, with no playoff appearances.
Year five is where it took off for Huesman, though. Could this be the season when the Mocs — facing little in the way of outside expectations after being picked to finish fourth in the nine-team SoCon — finally get to a higher level?
If so, it would be the year that, to reference a hashtag constantly used by the @gomocsfb Twitter account, they were able to "Climb The Mountain."
"We made the hashtag because of where we are, sitting between Signal Mountain and Lookout Mountain," Wright said. "Nobody falls on top of a mountain. Nobody gets to the peak by falling there, right? It takes work, it takes sacrifice, it takes hard times.
"We've talked to the team about (late UCLA men's basketball coach and 10-time NCAA champion) John Wooden, how he coached for 14 years before anything good ever happened to him; he worked his tail off to get to that point. But it doesn't matter if it's life, it's football ... very few people are born on third base. We've all had to work for something to get there, and sometimes you climb that mountain and sometimes a rock catches your foot, you slip, and you've got to figure out a way to put another stake in there and keep going."
The past two seasons, the Mocs have slipped on that climb late in the schedule with losses that kept them out of the playoffs. But it's a new year, and the Mocs started preparation for the season Thursday with a two-hour practice that mostly ran smoothly because, after five seasons with the same head coach, there's a standard of how things are meant to be run.
That obviously means nothing in terms of wins and losses, but what it does is put the onus of the success of the season on the shoulders of the head coach and team leaders such as Ford and Person, five-year members in their own right.
Ford was named to the Walter Payton Award (FCS offensive player of the year) watch list this week. Person was joined Thursday by UTC cornerback Kam Brown in being among the 30 players named to the Buck Buchanan Award (FCS defensive player of the year) watch list.
"We're climbing the mountain this year. It means we're putting one foot in front of the other and not jumping too far ahead," Ford said. "We're just focusing on the little things, one day at a time, one rep at a time and overcoming the hardships."
Thursday was just another step, but an important one, toward the Sept. 2 season opener at North Alabama, the first chance for the Mocs to show in a game how high they might go.
"Climbing up the mountain is a lot harder than when you get to the top of the mountain," Person said, "so we've just been taking things day by day and working hard on offense, on defense and just trying to get to the top."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.