Per the admission of multiple coaches and players, spring practice can be a grind. The special teams competitions during the spring are the times to break up the monotony. It gets loud from the sides surrounding the drill, but from the stands, one player shows a certain relish for special teams. That’s Alex Netherda, who bounds between those competition periods with a joie de vivre not common to spring football.

"Those (periods) are very fun, and I think they're real important," Netherda said after Saturday's practice, "it can get mundane when you're just going against the same guys every day all year, doing the same drills. Everyday you're supposed to compete, but sometimes you can lose that fire when you're low on energy or you're tired, didn't get enough sleep, did poorly in the drill before, whatever, infinite things that go into it. Whenever you can go in there and have your own kind of inner-squad team and compete that way, I think it's awesome. It builds camaraderie, guys on defense are working with guys on offense, and you don't want to let those guys down, because you're competing and all eyes are on you. You've just got to show out."

That's what Netherda does in games, as special teams is where he played the vast majority of his reps in 2018. Per PFF, Netherda had 105 of his 108 game reps on special teams units a year ago, taking the the most reps of anyone on the team on the kickoff coverage units. His work on kickoff coverage and punt return unitsgot him recognized by Charlie Ragle during last weeks coaches clinic.

"We had some high school coaches here for our clinic (last Friday, March 8th), I was showing some different stuff at the clinic presentation," Ragle said, "and he came up several times off cutups we had made from the offseason because he does it right."

For Justin Wilcox, these are the types of guys you need, that are willing to do everything, which Netherda has done in playing special teams and moving from safety to wide receiver to running back in a short period of time.

"He’s one of the captains of the teams we have divided up," Wilcox said about Netherda in the ST competition drills, "Alex loves this, he loves competing, he loves being on the team, and he’s a valuable guy because he can do a lot of things for us, he’s a Swiss army knife."

"He’s one of those guys and I told him this," Ragle added, "when you’re drawing up special teams and guys that you want on your special teams units, Alex Netherda isn't the first guy that comes to mind. I don’t mean that as a slight, as a coach you’re always pressing a little bigger, a little stronger, a little bit faster, yet he always shows up."

One of the other focuses Netherda has had this spring is to lift up the running back room, being the sole senior among the group. It's not as experienced of a group, as Patrick Laird took the vast majority of the reps in 2018. It has given the running back room a whole lot of motivation in the meantime.

"When you go a whole year without a meal," Netherda said, "you get pretty hungry. Everybody's working hard, but at the same time, you want to be the one that's working hardest. If you’re going to lift others around you, you need to make sure that you, yourself, are elevating."

Netherda's doing just that, taking handfuls of reps with the first group at running back, including a run Saturday where he appeared to be stopped at the line, shed a would-be tackler, bounced out a gap and picked up five more yards for a first down. He has the confidence of his current and former teammates as more than just a force of positive energy as well.

This is just one piece of the puzzle of Alex Netherda, who walked on to the team after a stellar senior season at Maria Carillo in Santa Rosa. He's switched positions at least three times. He saw his family house burn down in the North Bay fires of 2017, playing in the Washington State game after a week of driving back and forth between Berkeley and Windsor, where his family was staying after evacuating (SF Chronicle profile on Netherda is here). Netherda has since earned a scholarship, and through it all plays with a joy visible from anywhere in Memorial Stadium. Ragle probably sums it up best:

"A guy like that is not going to be denied"