“There are only two things you can do right now: breathe and feel pain. Don’t show weakness. The legs feed the wolf. Don’t be soft. Kevin Gates doesn’t get tired so neither should you.”

As the sore bodies utilize every ounce of energy to hold the plank, bear crawl or complete each rep, the athletes begin to slowly adapt to this rigorous schedule. 

The athletic department created the role of a weight room coach. Coach John Pond began this challenge.

“An integral part of high school athletics is having a really good strength coach,” Athletic Director Gerry Stanford said. “Coach Pond has done a tremendous job playing this role for all sports, not just in football.”

After leadership changed in the athletic department last year, Stanford chose to re-evaluate and create a new plan to be as successful as possible in all sports.  

“Obviously, in football, we lift a lot of weights, but it’s vital to build athletes, not just players,” Stanford said. “So, we are trying to build athletes and strength training has a large part in building athletes as a whole. That’s Coach Pond’s goal. Within Texas High, we are trying to build the best athletes we can for every sport, and this allows us to be an effective and efficient athletic program.”

Many sports who have never done any serious weightlifting are now learning the proper ways to build muscle and also how to challenge the body. 

“It’s not required [for all sports to use Coach Pond] and there are no rules necessarily, but we are highly encouraging all head coaches to develop a strength program as far as getting kids into the weight room,” Stanford said. “Coach Pond will create an individualized plan for each sport and work with all other coaches.” 

Even though this is only the third semester of this process, players are already more fit, doubtlessly making them better in their respective sports.

“We want to be very consistent,” Stanford said. “I think this is something we definitely want to happen every year. We started this summer with our workouts being all sports working together, not separated out. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with separating them, but we did want all sports to have the opportunity to get a good workout everyday.”

In addition to this, a new request is for all sports to complete a community service project. 

“I think it is something that is important to our community,” Stanford said. “Getting out there and supporting and helping our community. It is encouraged that each sport finds a service project that they can do that is beneficial to somebody other than their sport.”