High School Football Players Workout To Prepare For Upcoming Season

By Andy Hutchison

From the perspective of local fans and media, the high school football season is coming. For the coaches and players, in some ways, the season is already here.

After all, Newtown High School football players have been working out with NHS Coach Steve George and strength coach Cody Foss, owner of The Fitness Loft, at Newtown Youth Academy throughout the summer.

The preseason training program started before George’s time at the helm more than a decade ago and continues as a way for the young pigskin enthusiasts to get in, or stay in, shape for the start of each season. For a couple of hours each weekday morning they lift weights and are guided in strength-building and speed-enhancing exercises as they gear up for the start of the regular campaign, which kicks off in mid-September.

“Every football team in the county is training in the summer to get ready for the upcoming season,” Foss said. “Knowing this, it’s our job to make sure our team has the best possible information and training program possible.”

Foss has been working with the athletes in one wing of the Youth Academy and George in part of another where weight-lifting equipment is set up. Foss has the players using bungee resistance and assistance techniques, dry land sleds, and medicine balls to improve speed and endurance, and George works with players on weight-lifting.

Traditionally, the program, designed for all NHS football players — freshman, junior varsity, and varsity gridders alike — has been held on the high school grounds. With all of the ongoing construction of field renovations, however, the team was without a facility until NYA officials donated space for the players.

“We work very closely with the high school athletes,” NYA Director Keith Miller said. “Because of the situation with the construction we knew there was going to be a need for the football team.”

The weight equipment belongs to the high school. Each morning the players get in a little extra weight-lifting as they unload loose pieces of equipment from a storage bin behind NYA, and restock the bin after completing their workouts. In between, of course, they are taught the proper techniques for various lifts and exercises by George and Foss, in part, to try to get a leg up on the competition.

“We have to make our athletes faster, more explosive, and in better condition in order to compete competitively in our league and reach the goals that this program has set for itself,” Foss said.

But there is more to this than trying to get better than the opposition.

“A lot of it’s injury prevention, too,” George points out. “If they don’t have developed muscles then they have a better chance of getting injured. Football’s a contact sport. Usually the stronger kid, the stronger and faster kid’s going to have the edge.”

Newtown High’s varsity season gets underway September 16 against Brookfield at 7 pm. The game is designated a home tilt but scheduled to be played at Pomperaug High School in Southbury because of the conversion from grass to turf at Newtown High’s Blue and Gold Stadium. According to the schedule, the Nighthawks are slated to play their ensuing four games on the road before hosting Bunnell of Stratford at Blue and Gold on October 22.