Sept. 30, 2008

By Katie Meier
Assistant Sports Information Director

Meeting and exceeding expectations is what motivates athletes at any level. Having someone doubt their athletic abilities gives athletes the drive to prove naysayers wrong. Rarely do athletes concede that an expectation or goal is unattainable; they simply buckle down, keep trying until they find success, then move on to the next challenge. For athletes, there is always another mountain to scale.

While it is not in an athlete's nature to doubt his ability to succeed, the student-athletes on the Lafayette football team were skeptical when they received the workout plan from head strength and conditioning coach Brad Potts when he joined the staff during the summer of 2007.

"I know they thought my expectation levels were too high," Potts said, "but I didn't change them and by the end of the summer, my expectations were met."

Potts' philosophy is to build to a powerful, explosive athlete, and since coming to College Hill he has done just that. The results the players saw and felt meant it took little time for them to buy into Potts' approach.

"Coach Potts lays it out there for us and it's hard not to succeed," senior fullback and co-captain Joe Russo said.

Senior tailback Maurice White says that Potts, like all of the Lafayette coaches, expects "nothing less than our best. He wants nothing but 110 percent."

While every player gives "110 percent" in their workouts with Potts, some players on the team have developed reputations for their extreme dedication to the strength and conditioning workouts. Russo and fellow co-captain Andy Romans are two players who developed an affinity for strength training before arriving on College Hill, but both admit their approach to training has changed dramatically under Potts.

"Before it was all about power lifting but since I started working with Coach Potts, he's incorporated a lot more speed work, and it's all about being more athletic and more efficient," Romans said.

It is a common misperception that football players just need to be strong and that the more they can bench or press, the better they will be on game day. That's simply not true, Potts says, and has completely changed the approach the Lafayette football team takes in the weight room.

"Our conditioning is probably a lot more grueling than it was," he said, "but the main difference now is we do drills and lifts that make us more explosive. We needed some guys to lose some body fat which is part of becoming an explosive athlete. We now have kids who are leaner, more explosive and more enduring and yet our strength numbers are higher now than they've ever been before."

The squats and bench presses typically associated with football training programs are still incorporated into the workouts, but by adding plyometrics, speed drills and more dynamic strength moves, players have developed better speed and agility. White plays a position in which that increased speed and agility are vital.

"At my position I need to be able to move," he said. "If I can't move I'm not going to be any good to my team. Coach Potts focuses on exercises that each position can do to help benefit them on the field."

Sophomore defensive end Jeff Katz came to Lafayette after playing several years of minor league baseball. While he was in shape upon arriving at Lafayette, he was not in "football shape" and thus relied upon Potts to help him get into the condition he needed to be to take the field for the Leopards.

"To play baseball I had to lose 20 to 30 pounds," he said, "so for football I had to gain that weight back but without sacrificing speed. Coach Potts did a great job helping me with that and we're still working on it."

While each athlete has a program tailored for his specific need or position, there's one thing all these athletes have in common: their desire to be at their physical peak began years ago and has only increased upon seeing their hard work translate into success on the football field.

Romans may have started his training program earlier than anyone on the team.

"My dad actually had me lifting weights when I was in the seventh and eighth grades," he said. "My mom was worried it was going to stunt my growth but it didn't and my junior year of high school is when I really started to lift a lot. I started going to a personal trainer in 2004."

That personal trainer is former Lafayette player Pete Ohnegian '94, who went on to a professional playing career after his days at Fisher Stadium. Romans has yet another former Lafayette player to workout with when he returns home to Allendale, N.J.: current Buffalo Bills linebacker Blake Costanzo '06.

"I've lifted with him for the past couple of years now," Romans said. "I'm very fortunate to compete with him and to lift with someone who's playing at the next level. We push each other in different ways."

Russo, Katz and White also all started to get involved in strength and conditioning during their high school playing careers. Russo took the initiative to start a program on his own, as his high school did not have a weight training program and he was one of the few guys on the team who lifted.

Without a doubt, though, all of their routines were taken to an entirely new level at Lafayette. Their workouts were not only more intense, they also changed during the course of the year. The in-season workouts were designed to maintain the players' strengths and fitness levels while the offseason and summer workouts were the most demanding.

"The players go home for winter break with a fairly basic program but when they come back we hit it pretty hard," Potts said. "We go four days a week for an hour-and-15 to an hour-and-20 minutes for five weeks and after that it's three days of lifting and three days of speed stations outside. That was probably the most drastic thing the kids have seen since they've been here. Romans came up to me at the end of the first session and said, `Coach, I've always thought I was in great shape but I've never done anything like this before in my life.'"

Being put through such grueling routines has translated into success on the field and has also created a noticeable increase in confidence among the players.

"The workouts really opened their eyes and the confidence they got after going through some of things really increased," Potts said.

That confidence has also bled through to the players' academics. It's not easy to balance practices, games, traveling and schoolwork, especially when the players have no true offseason. Once they're back from winter break they hit the gym hard for up to five days a week meaning learning time management skills are a must.

"It's not easy to balance everything," White, an Economics and Business major, said. "If it were easy, everyone would do it. You just have to stay focused and know what you're here for. We're here first to get an education and second to play football."

Katz is a double major in Policy Studies and Economics and Business while Romans and Russo are graduating in May and have the extra pressure of adding post-graduation plans to their to-do lists. Russo, who is in the process of applying to dental school, and Romans, who wants to someday break into the football coaching world, have had three-plus years to learn how to balance a number of tasks that to many would seem impossible to tackle.

"When you have work to do, you find the time to do it," Russo said simply. Romans agreed.

"It is tiring and some people may not realize exactly how much we do during the year," he said, "but we learn to manage our time and get our work done efficiently."

And efficiency is the name of the game for the Lafayette football team. Whether it's more efficient workouts or more efficient studying, it translates into effectiveness both on and off the playing field. The team grade-point average has risen steadily over the past several years and the Leopards are in search of their fourth Patriot League championship in the last six seasons.

The players' devotion to becoming the best athletes they can be means they are set up for nothing less than success. They have the tools and confidence to meet and exceed any and all expectations. All they have to do now is go out on the field and, as the famous saying goes, Just Do It.