Walk into the new-and-improved Bob Martinez Sports Center at 2 p.m. of any given afternoon, and one will see the constant activity that serves as a reminder of how University of Tampa athletics are so successful: teams are practicing, working out, or getting prepared to practice or workout, athletes are getting treatment, coaches are preparing… It’s an exciting chaos that can be counted on nearly every day between 2 and 6 p.m.
There is no doubt that the Martinez Center is a step up from what UT had, even just last year. All of the facilities are beautiful and were unveiled in late September, yet changes are still occurring.
The final step in completing the Martinez Center is the weight training room, which has nearly doubled its previous size; the flooring has just been laid and equipment put back into place. And fittingly, this last space of the renovation is the one place that cannot be agreed upon by coaches and staff. UT athletics’ success has had much to do with conditioning and endurance.
“The stronger and better conditioned you are,” said University of Tampa Athletic Director, Larry Marfise, “the less chance you have of being injured and it is important to prevent.”
Scott Brickett, head athletic trainer and UT alum is blown away by Tampa’s gym.
“I do believe this is one of the best fitness centers at a Division-II level, without football, and the best in the conference,” Brickett said.
Brickett was highly involved in the planning of the new facility. He and his associates looked at University of South Florida and other schools’ athletic centers in UT’s Sunshine State Conference, as well as worked with a company called Perform Better, who designs training facilities across the country.
“The hope,” Brickett said, “is to have a more functional and flexible weight room with good flow and to make use of the changes happening in strength and conditioning.”
Brickett mentions flexibility, but he doesn’t mean stretching muscles. Baseball coach Joe Urso says it takes a lot of hours to be great, but everyone wants that 2-5 p.m. window of time because of class schedules. In baseball, having about 35 players, they need two weightlifting times in order for everyone to benefit. And because baseball is not in their main season, they aren’t getting priority.
“The new facilities are great,” Urso says, “and we prefer to be doing everything on campus, but there are not enough time slots, so it is better for the baseball team to strength train a mile from campus until our season.”
One of Coach Urso’s baseball players, catcher Shane Rowland actually likes being secluded from everything else.
“I like just going there [off campus] to get a good workout in,” Rowland said. “I like not having other people walking in or through the weight room. We can focus because it’s just us and the strength trainer.”
Urso looks at his practice plan everyday and lists the players who might come late to practice or have to leave early, due to the conflicts in class times with practice. He knows, though, that graduation is the number one priority, so it is a give and take.
Many coaches, players and staff believe having priority scheduling is the key to minimizing scheduling conflicts. Like the baseball team, nearly every team on campus has an issue with fitting everything in: practice, strength and conditioning, treatments for injuries… all this, on top of having classes and study time.
If, perhaps, UT staggered the time they needed to have classes, more teams could be more efficient with their time. But because basketball and volleyball are in the gym at the same time, they both are allowed only one court each; that’s 20 or so players for two basketball hoops and another 20 for one volleyball net. The same is true for men’s and women’s soccer, men’s lacrosse and the upcoming women’s lacrosse teams sharing fields. And they all have to start and finish at the same time so players can come from and go to their classes on time.
Marfise thinks the solution should be priority registration, which is something that is not unheard of.
“Most professors at the university,” he said, “will work with individuals, and most of the time it’s fine, but it doesn’t always work well.”
Another issue is the idea of having a full-time strength trainer. Currently, each team at UT uses personally-fundraised money to hire their own strength and conditioning coach on a per diem basis. Brickett believes, as noted before, that UT athletics is lacking that central authority.
“We are investigating and researching the possibility of having one strength and conditioning coach,” he said.
Brickett’s hope is to have one coach with interns or aids assisting in the program he or she would implement. Marfise says he has been pushing for this to happen since the school started its strength and conditioning program.
UT has chosen to predominantly use two strength coaches, both who are alumni and former athletes at UT. One of these is Jeff Foxenberger (or “Fox” as he’s known in the UT sports world). As this year’s fall season began, the new facility seemed to be looking nice, but functionally, things were lacking. Fox, like others, believed a single, knowledgeable person should be in charge of designing a program for the athletes, but make it specific to each sport’s needs. This person would also be in charge of arranging the weight room area for the changes constantly arising in strength and conditioning, buying equipment and plan the master schedule so every athlete could accomplish what they needed to do in the same window of time everyone wanted.
Fox and a business partner presented a plan to the coaches to make all this happen. However, while most of the teams agreed to Fox’s plan, two did not, so the plan was thrown out. Marfise says it was expensive and could not get the entire staff on board.
Because he charged very little to train an entire team at UT, he was also able to train his personal clients here. This privilege was no longer allowed for Fox, so he was forced to move off campus. Leaving the one team he was training, men’s soccer, just a few weeks into the season was not an option for him, though, so he still works with them twice weekly.
“Ultimately, it’s about the student-athletes; that’s who I really care about helping,” said Fox.
In Fox’s opinion, the most important part of a training program is consistency.
“An athlete that comes into their freshman year likely has not lifted weights very much,” Fox said. “To see their evolution and improvements within those four years is exciting and noticeable. Programs need time for development.”
No student athlete has been with the same strength program for their four years at the university.
Though the issues of time and money are clear, the athletic department is not giving up.
“We are always going to have the issue of time, with any plan presented,” Marfise said. “We are working on a proposal and [working on] how to fund it.”
Sloane Baby can be reached at sloane.baby@spartans.ut.edu.
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