By Brian Graham
For Buscovoice.com
I had occasion to stop by the morning workouts of Churubusco athletes at the high school, and I was reminded of the evolution of training from “back in the day” to the present. Think of it as a few hours spent with professional trainers, the most up to date equipment, and you don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for it.

When I was in school, we had some summer workouts, loosely organized by the captains, but absolutely nothing like what these young men and women put themselves through currently, with the help of the coaches.

This is all done in an effort by the coaches and players just to remain competitive in their respective sports. All schools are doing this, and the days of showing up for the first day of practice out of shape are long gone.

For all practical purposes, every sport is now year round, and while coaches encourage athletes to play multiple sports, the issue they are not very tolerant of is not making the effort to better themselves through summer workouts.

It was gratifying to see the number of athletes that were making the sacrifice, getting up early, working out hard, and learning the lessons of how hard work pays off, with many of them going on to work summer jobs after their workout.

I talked with Churubusco High School athletic director/head football coach, Lee Etzler, about the upcoming summer football camp starting July 21st.

“We will go from about 7 a.m. until 1 or so,” Etzler said.

We talked about numerous subjects, but he still missed nothing.

“Keep your feet still, don’t take that cheat step,” he mentioned to one athlete, as we talked. I told him that I thought several of the high schoolers demonstrated good running mechanics. Coach Etzler said “all the credit goes to Doc, he really stresses that” referring to assistant football/head track coach Zach Dock.

“I think we are really getting excellent senior leadership,” said assistant football coach John Schmidt, “and it shows up in the attendance.”

Coach Paul Sade agrees, stating that, “without question, a stronger athlete is a better athlete”.

COMING SOON: Watch Buscovoice.com for online videos of the athletes working out.