Livingston athletics is getting the offseason it has needed for years. Junior high and high school students are showing up for workouts, and the improvement is beginning to show. The coaches can see it, the kids see it, and a bond is forming in the program.
Work was already at full speed at 7:30 a.m. Monday morning. The boys and girls have staggered intervals in the weight room and on Cochran Field to maximize their time.
Athletic Director Tucker Carter has June and July mapped out. Offseason training is an area of expertise because of a position held before diving into coaching.
“Performance Course is the first place I worked for when I graduated college,” he said. “It's a strength and conditioning program, essentially, that is very heavily involved in (Dallas/Fort Worth). Basically, any top blue-blood program you can name up there – Allen, Southlake Carroll, Highland Park, Aledo – they all use Performance Course and have for years.
“That is where I got a very solid base in the strength and conditioning world and learned how to program, as far as structure of the weight room and program the running stuff to where it's progressively getting harder, yet more attainable for the kids as the summer goes on. That's kind of what I've always used for my groundwork of structuring the summer.
“If you don't really know what you're doing as far as putting together a workout, you can just get into putting a workout up there and you don't really know if the kids are getting better. We've used a lot of their speed and agility stuff and a lot of their programming in the weight room.”
Performance Course is a focus on speed, strength, agility, explosiveness, injury resistance, as well as mental toughness and character development. More importantly, it is motivating an average of 120 boys and 80 girls into DeWalt Field House for improvement.
“We are we are doing just dynamic movement and strength training, explosive agility stuff every day,” Livingston Girls Coordinator Heather Mosser said. “And, it's exciting. It keeps the kids wanting more. It's competitive, just because we're pushing them – pushing them to compete against each other, but competing and getting better reps, each and every time. Honestly, the buy-in from the kids, I think, also stems from the culture that we've built. They want to be there, they want to get better, they want to go all in, they want to give every effort.”
Construction is ongoing just a few hundred feet away on the home side of the new football stadium. Meanwhile, the building is also occurring down on the field to create complete players. Stations are set up where athletes are pushing the sled one minute and maneuvering across the agility ladder the next. Once inside, weight room activities are quick movements with high reps.
Mosser believes the coaching staff also dedicating themselves this summer has led to a tremendous showing. Attendance at Livingston had historically been a struggle in the summer months.
“I have 11 female coaches on my female staff, and they're all there in the morning. Our kids show up for that, because they know that if our coaches are there, (they) need to be there. And it's a drastic difference from years past, you know, there might have been one or two of us.
“The sky's the limit for how far we can take these kids because they're showing up, they're hungry, they want to be there, they want to compete, they want to get better, they want to grow. It's very dynamic, it's very exciting, and it's just good stuff. Every drill we do is to compete against someone else and go hard. It's a little bit of a different workout. It's a little bit more challenging, but also a little bit more competitive, because at the end of the day, our kids need to learn how to compete and learn how to win.
“A lot of the stuff is foundational movement into explosion, like working the first step, being able to get down and get back up and just move quickly with good fundamental form. You have to teach that from the ground up.”
The Lions have been through four weeks of workouts and Mosser said the ones that have attended every day know the difference in their performance. The upcoming schedule allows a week off for the July 4 holiday, then three more weeks of training to finish the summer.
This offseason is also giving Livingston’s newest coaches a chance to meet with the Lion student-athletes. Like most any school, there is some coaching turnover, and recent hires have built a rapport with the kids.
Both Carter and Mosser said the energy has been high all summer. They work out Mondays and Tuesdays, get a day to recover, then get one more challenging day Thursday before a three-day weekend.
“Everything that our new assistants are coming in saying – it's just night and day,” Mosser said. “The response that the kids give them, the growth that they're already seeing, the structure, the discipline, it's night and day from (other) programs.
“We've hired coaches from all over. So, everything that I can tell in the conversation that I've had with them is, we want to be the best program in this area by far and take over the district as well. We're not going to do that unless we know where we came from and we know where we want to go. When everyone is saying that what you're doing is impressive, it makes me excited to know that we're leading the way and we're doing it in the right way as well.”
