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Work off field keeps us competitive on it BEHIND THE DESK BARRY ALVAREZ • UW DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS O ur strength coaches are probably the most under- rated people on staff. They touch the athletes' lives every day through the school year and summer. They can set the tone for a team when the coaches aren't around. A lot of their responsibilities are team-building, and building chem- istry. Teaching a work ethic is also a part of what they do. You might think that would all be left up to the coaches, but NCAA rules limit access and contact dur- ing certain periods of the year. That's why the strength coaches are with the kids so much more of the time. I know our head coaches have great confidence in what they're doing: Ben Herbert in football, Scott Hettenbach in basketball, Jim Snider in hockey, to name a few. Ben played for me. So did one of his assistants, Jamil Walker. They were guys who bought into the program. They understand how we work, and how we have to win. They know the type of work ethic that has to be built into everyday habits. That's important because those habits carry over to the field. For today's student-athlete, it's a year-round commitment. They may go home for a little bit, but they're here in the summer for condition- ing. It used to be that football coach- es hoped that their guys would come back in shape. You don't have to worry about 12 » VARSITY APRIL 5, 2012 that anymore, because they never get out of shape. You don't have to spend time on conditioning during two-a-days in training camp. Maybe the biggest changes have taken place in the area of nutrition. When I played at Nebraska, I went to training table and ate as much as I could. Three hours later, I was at a pizza joint throwing down a pizza. It's so much different today, and It used to be that coaches hoped that their guys would come back in shape. You don't have to worry about that anymore, because they never get out of shape. there's a lot of thought put into it. My former football strength coach, John Dettmann, is at the front end of our performance nutri- tion program, and he has done a nice job educating our athletes. We're on the cutting edge with what we're doing here. We teach our kids how to eat and what to look for when they're shopping. Not only that, we're showing them how to shop smart, and with- in a budget. We also show them how to prepare and cook food. We offer this to all of our stu- dent-athletes, and the response has been positive. Building stronger, healthier bod- ies is only part of what's happening on campus. Construction continues on the Student Athlete Performance Cen- ter at Camp Randall. When I went to Albuquerque for the first weekend of games in the NCAA basketball tournament, I had a chance to see the facilities at the University of New Mexico. They're new, they're clean, they're bigger and they're more modern. Are we behind New Mexico? Absolutely. I'm talking about the weight room and the training rooms. For us to be able to maintain our suc- cess and continue to compete, it's mandatory to upgrade. We just want something func- tional that makes us competitive with everyone else that we're re- cruiting against. We've fallen way behind, and now we're trying to catch up. The on-going construction is going to cause hardships for all of our teams. We're going to have to relocate a number of our people, including academic services. Our football team will have to work out of different locker rooms. I'm sure our fans on game day will have to operate around differ- ent construction. But we'll tough it out for one year because it will pay dividends in the future.