When Wheeling Park head football coach Chris Daugherty first joined the staff at his alma mater back in 1993, one of his main duties was serving as the team’s strength and conditioning coach.
It’s fitting then that Coach ‘Doc’ has been instrumental in planning not only the offseason conditioning for his own team, but also for all the athletes in Ohio County.
When the West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission unveiled its phased return to athletics in the Mountain State, it required some quick thinking and planning.
Coaches and athletes are limited in what they can do during Phase I, so the idea was to maximize the little time they had with each athlete and get them back in some semblance of shape as the summer progresses.
That’s kind of what Doc has been doing since he took over in 2009 following the late Mark Nardone as head coach.
Daugherty’s teams struggled his first two seasons, going 3-17. But since, they’ve been on a tear, going 68-21-1 during the regular season. Included in that is the 2015 state championship season, the school’s only one in football to-date.
Doc’s winning percentage in the regular season is 64 percent. Take out the aberrations of the first two season, and that jumps to 76 percent.
Modified workouts extend to the Daugherty household as well, as the coach keeps his daughters working hard to stay in game shape for basketball.
His eldest played at Fairmont State and recently signed on to join the Park girls’ staff as an assistant. The middle daughter is a promising incoming freshman at Park, and his youngest is still in middle school.
They will be getting put through the same paces as his football players. So, it’s no surprise both experience success.
You’ll be missing out on the usual three-week period in terms of increased restrictions, but aside from that, how different will this be from your normal training regimen?
We will actually get to our three-week practice during Phase 3 of the WVSSAC phased return to play protocol. Phase three does have some changes to our normal three weeks of practice like we are not allowed to wear a helmet, shoulder pads, and no contact at all but overall, it will be similar to our norm. The big change is Phase 1 and Phase 2 when we have to keep the kids in pods of 10, and we cannot mix them.
During Phase 1, given groups of 10 or fewer, do you plan to stagger individual coaches with their groups for conditioning and then just rotate? Will you stagger players by class at different times of the day to cut down on larger groups?
We actually streamlined the Phase 1 and Phase 2 for all of the athletes in the county. We have worked very hard to get the kids in groups of 10 based on their sport, and we will work 40 athletes out at the same time, starting at 8:30 a.m. and finishing at 6:30 p.m. Phase one must be outdoors, so we are using the Wheeling Island Stadium because we can safely work 40 kids at a time. Phase one will start to recondition the athletes after a long inactive period.
Given you can only train outdoors during Phase 1, do you plan to cart some of the strength training equipment outdoors or stick to more traditional cardiovascular training and agility drills?
We will take no equipment outside. We are not allowed to use equipment for phase one. In Phase 2 we will start to use some equipment and maybe the weight room again. Phase 1 we will use bodyweight strength activities, plyometric exercises, change of direction movements, and conditioning.
Do you see this continuing into late July and then setting back or altering the traditional two-a-day training the first few weeks of August?
July will be Phase 3, and we will start to practice a lot like our normal three weeks, obviously following the WVSSAC guidelines. Hopefully, all goes well here in the Ohio Valley and in the State of West Virginia, which will then open us up to a normal August. Only time will tell.
Your daughters play sports as well. How tough has been for you as a parent, wanting to get out there not only with your team, but allowing your daughters to continue training and getting ready for their respective sports?
I do have athletes in my house, and it has been a process to keep them fit during this time. I am lucky that I can just adapt what I was sending home to the football players and put my girls through a workout. I thought it was important that they build on their strength during this time, knowing that they would lose some sport-specific skills during this time. The sport skill will come back, but I felt it was a good time to build on their strength. I felt the same way about my players; we needed to continue to maintain or build strength through this time at home.
