by Steve Schweikhart

Steve Schweikhart

The term "off season" has basically vanished from the vocabulary of the high school student athleteespecially when you are talking about a school the size of Haldane. With a very small pool of students from which to pull, the school's teams feature a majority of athletes that cross over from sport to sport, trading in their fall-season cleats for basketball shoes in the winter and spikes in the spring. With the demands of up to three sports during the school year, it is virtually impossible for athletes to develop and improve their skill level in all three.

Enter Rick Scarpulla, who runs Orange County-based Ultimate Advantage Sports Performance Training, and a focus on fitness, speed, strength, and agility. Instead of focusing on the skill set of a single sport, Scarpulla brought an all-encompassing approach to the Haldane gym this past Saturday. Scarpulla's goal isnt to build a star football or basketball player, it is to improve Haldane's overall athleticism, which will ultimately provide benefits regardless of the sport. Scarpulla's resume and demeanor make him virtually impossible to ignore. He is currently the head strength and conditioning coach at West Point, a top Nike Football and Sport Camp coach, and is one of Nike's top certified SPARQ (Speed, Power, Agility, Reaction, and Quickness) trainers. His approach to fitness and training so impressed the Haldane Booster Club, that the organization provided a generous grant to bring Scarpulla in to run a series of programs designed specifically for Haldane's athletes.

Steve Schweikhart

Jeffrey Sniffen, a sixth grade Social Studies teacher at Haldane, and one of the varsity football team's assistant coaches, spearheaded the effort to bring Scarpulla on board. "What makes sports so great is that it's life simplified" Sniffen said before Saturday's session. "In sports, what you put into it is what you get out of it. It takes away some of the uncontrollable circumstances that life may throw at you. With this in mind, the foundational component in all sports is athleticism. The better the athlete, the better the individual performance or individual contribution to the team. Here at Haldane, we are both blessed and cursed by its size. The negative is that we simply don't have as many athletes as some of our bigger competitors. The positive is that we are small enough to implement changes that can have a sweeping effect on all of our students in a very direct and significant way."

Watching Saturday's sessions, it was clear Scarpulla was getting everything possible out of Haldane's best. His motivational style was evident during both the morning girls' session and the afternoon boys' program. He toed the line between cultivation and brutal honesty as he led the students through a number of agility drills, sprints, and hurdle courses. Good efforts were rewarded with nicknames, like "Track Star", "Big Red", and "Goalie", while more halfhearted attempts were met with far less enthusiasm. By the end of the sessions, the athletes' technical improvement was noticeable, and Scarpulla wasn't afraid to give everyone a fist bump as a show of approval.

The impact was not lost on Sniffen, whose players have worked with Scarpulla in the past. "Rick's training emphasizes a "no-holds-barred" style that taps into the very best the athletes have in them. In my years of coaching, I have never witnessed anything quite as extraordinary as the moments Rick worked with my players. He had them doing things they never even dreamed they were capable of achieving. For some of them, my players have been forever changed in the way they carry themselves and the way they approach challenges."

Scarpulla also stressed the importance of good nutrition and the use of common sense when training. He cited the Internet as a double-edged sword when it comes to developing a proper diet and exercise program. "The Internet is the greatest source of information we have ever known" Scarpulla said at the end of the program, "but it also the greatest source of misinformation." He cited YouTube as an example of the latter. "Anyone can post a video on YouTube and claim it to work or be true. Be careful." He stressed that the students should go to trusted sources for developing their own personal plan and not rely on information simply culled from the YouTube library.

Scarpulla plans on visiting Haldane at least one more time in the not too distant future. For additional information on the program, please contact Jeffrey Sniffen at jsniffen@ haldane.lhric.org.

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