MORGANTOWN —
The National Basketball Association and National Hockey League are still in the midst of naming their champions from the season past, major league baseball has yet to play in the heat of summer, yet if you listen closely as you drive past Milan Puskar Stadium you can hear the true sounds of summer – West Virginia football players at work.
They are not yet conducting practices, although there will be unsupervised seven-on-seven drills, and a talented freshman quarterback named Barry Brunetti is now on campus taking classes so he can work with offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen in beginning to understand the system.
Mostly, though, they belong to Mike Joseph, the former Fairmont State University running back now in charge of the Mountaineer weight program.
“The No. 1 goal right now is to get them ready for camp and the season,” Joseph said.
The off-season strength and conditioning program began with a team meeting on Monday night and with Tuesday workouts. With spring practice still fresh in their minds, this year-round circus that is college football begins anew.
The off-season program is totally different than what begins over the summer. For the most part, in the off-season, the Mountaineer players are asked to improve their basic physical assets – strength, balance and their weight.
Now it’s time to work on their skills with the drills emphasizing explosiveness and position specific drills.
It is the most grueling, most difficult part of the football season, the hot summer sun beating down upon them, the sweat rolling out of each pore, some of it evaporating into the summer air, much of running into their burning eyes.
“We are trying to get competition out of it, too,” Joseph said.
The competition aspect is important in keeping the interest level high, as well as in pushing them through the football player’s natural competitive nature.
Two and a half months of just telling them they will be better football players is a long time, so they have goals, whether it be group goals or individual competitions to add a challenge, something tangible in the present to work for, rather than just that cherry of a bowl assignment that comes six or seven months later with a strong season.
The ultimate goal really is quite simple to define, hard to attain.
“The goal is be strong, fast, explosive and resilient,” Joseph said.
The reality is that the strength staff addresses six areas in creating the ultimate athlete, as far as his training goes.
They are:
• Strength
• Flexibility and injury avoidance
• Agility and quickness
• Speed and explosive power
• Conditioning
• Nutrition and recognition that you must take care of your body
The key point is that there are no shortcuts and, in truth, if there were shortcuts they might not be taken for that would subtract from the ultimate goal, which is team building, striving together to reach a goal that does not come easily.
It takes commitment to get through it because the work is hard and there are no cheering fans, no cheerleaders or Mountaineer.
Just them and 320-pound weight or a couple of journeys up Law School Hill between them and exhaustion.
And make no doubt that it matters.
Joseph can always tell them about Ellis Lankster, a cornerback who came here just a couple of years ago out of junior college in Mississippi.
In junior colleges you have far less advantages in the area of weight training than you have at major football powers and Lankster came in out of shape and overweight, two areas which can turn a promising cornerback into a former cornerback.
If he brought a paunch with him, he also brought a desire to get rid of it.
Joseph told him what he had to do, coaxed him through it and Lankster was willing to put forth the necessary effort.
The result was one of those satisfying results that a coach like Joseph gets in place of accolades from the public.
“Ellis Lankster put himself in position to be drafted,” Joseph said.
The secret to being able to pull that out of a player is simple.
“Trust,” Joseph said. “It comes down to trust. If they believe and trust in what you tell them, they will do what you want. I’m basically a teacher in the weight room.”
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
