COLUMBUS, Ohio – Summer is here and the rest of the Ohio State recruiting class of 2019 is on campus and just starting to go through work as new members of the football team. Strength and conditioning work welcomes them as the first step of the path of becoming part of a Buckeye and none of those players will have a chance to lose their black stripes and officially join the team until training camp starts in a couple of months.

That does not mean that the rest of the team gets the summer off and it has been a call for all hands on deck as Ryan Day’s team goes through its first offseason with its new head coach in charge.

NCAA rules limit the amount of time that coaches are able to spend around the team so Mickey Marotti and his staff will be the ones who get the most time with the team as they look put in the hard work over the summer that should pay off in the fall.

“We’re at an eight-hour week, so you know those guys are in the weight room,” Day say on Wednesday during a summer press conference to team media. “It's lifting, they’re on the field doing some running, different drills and then they have classes.”

The early enrollees already know what the transition to a college weight program is all about but for the rest of the class, it will be a baptism of fire as they will get pushed hard as they shed their star rankings and high school kudos and look to rebuild themselves as collegiate players.

The summer is for more than just hitting the weight room and looking for teammates to do drill work with however. Day has given very specific marching orders to his team as they attack the summer.

“The first thing is leadership,” Day added. “The second thing really is you know getting some team camaraderie going and building those relationships with each other, building those relationships with the coaches. You know you don’t have a full course load in the summer, it’s a little lighter, so you get an opportunity build some of those things, you spend more time together, and I think that's really, really important.”

Day went on to talk about a host of other topics during his summer press conference including about the development of Justin Fields, the importance of Ohio State recruiting with a couple of big visit weekends coming up during the summer and the transfer portal among a slew of topics. We will be getting into more specifics with these topics over the coming days and weeks but you can get a preview of everything that Day had to say today above in the video player with his full comments above.