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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


Top Of Their Class

Samson\'s High School strength & conditioning coaches of the year
by: Patrick Finley
© More from this issue

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Bruce Harbach
Head Football Coach and Strength Coach,
Lancaster Catholic High School
Strength and Conditioning Coordinator,
Wilson High School • Lancaster, PA


Bruce Harbach is a coach and a teacher. Problem is, it’s at two different schools.

Harbach is the head football coach and strength coach at Lancaster Catholic High School in Lancaster, Pa. He’s a physical education teacher and strength coach at Wilson High School, about 30 minutes away.

Not that Harbach’s complaining. After being an assistant coach in different states for 25 years, Harbach took over the Lancaster Catholic program three years ago, when his son graduated from high school.

So, every day during the season Harbach leaves Wilson at 3 PM and gets to Lancaster before the 3:50 practice start time.

“It’s not the perfect situation because I’m not at the school I coach at, but it works out O.K.,” he said. “It gives me a little bit of a break when I drive there,” he said. “It helps me think a little bit.”

He’s doing something right. In his three years, Lancaster Catholic has gone from 3-7 to 4-6 to 10-2. They have 18 returning starters.

At both schools, Harbach established a power-lifting program incorporated with Olympic lifts, increasing student weightlifting participation along the way. He runs a speed program every summer, and continues the speed training all season.

The good news is, Harbach’s two schools will never meet; they play in different divisions. “Thank God,” Harbach said.

Ken Cass
Strength and Conditioning Coach
McQueen High School • Reno, Nevada


Ken Cass and Ken Dalton came to McQueen High School about the time the first coat of paint dried 23 years ago. The first-year school had juniors and seniors and didn’t receive many star athletes, most of whom preferred to stay at an established program.

It showed that first year. The team won one game. They weren’t much better the next few years.

Cass, an assistant coach/strength coach, and Dalton, a legendary head coach in Nevada, decided something needed to be done. They needed to train their athletes in the weight room. Not liking the extra work, many football players quit.

“We stuck to our guns, and we took some heat,” Cass said.

From 1990-2002, McQueen made the state football finals nine times and won five titles. In 15 years as a defensive coordinator, Cass’ defense allowed the fewest points in the state every single year.

The culture of weightlifting improved, too. The school went from having no weightlifting classes in the mid-1980s to seven now, with between 40 and 70 students apiece. The school’s weightlifting team won the state competition 17 years in a row.

Cass stopped coaching football after last season, ending a 22-year run. He’s still the strength coach at McQueen, but is looking to become a vice principal next year, probably at another school.

He’ll be leaving three football coaches who were in his wedding party 18 years ago, as well as his daughter, who will be a senior at McQueen. He’ll also leave a school he helped develop into a power.

“It’s going to be one of the toughest things I’ve every done,” Cass said. “It’s going to be hard, personally. But the program’s going to be successful no matter what.”

C. J. Stockel
Former Strength and Conditioning Coach
Woodward Academy • College Park, GA


C. J. Stockel says it’s O.K. to trick kids. Well, just let him explain it. “Way back when, when I was getting started, one of the coaches said the key is to trick kids to do what they don’t want to and enjoy it,” said Stockel, who was the strength and conditioning coach at Woodward Academy outside Atlanta.

For Stockel, the trick came easy. Get kids in competition – get them playing games – and they’ll have fun, even if it’s with 300 pounds of weights on their shoulders.

That in mind, he started War Eagle Weightlifting, a competitive Olympic lifting team based at Woodward. He raised the average enrollment of weightlifting classes at Woodward from two or three kids to 20. The goal is to be fun and educational. Stockel tells kids how to lift – there are 40 teaching points to a clean or snatch lift – and how lifting helps their other sports.

“When we were growing up, you did things because adults told you to do it,” he said. “Now, kids look at you and ask why. If you can’t explain it, they’re not going to do it. You have to explain why it’s important. An educated athlete is going to perform a lot better.”


Stockel’s lifting mentor is Mike Burgener, a San Diego-area coach at Rancho Buena Vista High School who focuses on unusual and militaristic lifts. Both try to keep it fun; Stockel developed a five-person race where athletes flip tractor tires the length of a football field. The losers do pushups.

Stockel left Woodward in April to become the performance sports director at Velocity Sports, a strength school in Atlanta. He left behind a football team that had made the playoffs four-of-five seasons, and a group of male and female lifters he still takes great pride in.

“It’s about teaching a lifestyle - that’s important,” he said. “Even if ya gotta trick them to start.”


Doug Fairchild
Strength and Conditioning Coach
Caprock High School • Amarillo, Texas


Doug Fairchild could probably afford a new car – or two – with the money he’s spent on weight equipment. Some of his family vacations happen to be wherever the the national convention annual conference is being held.

In other words, he’s a devoted strength coach. It helps that his wife and children love the sport, too. But the $40-$50,000 worth of strength equipment he’s bought over the years – a lot of time, to help stock a high school weight room – has been worth it.


Fairchild, the strength and conditioning coach at Caprock High School in Amarillo, Texas, thinks nothing of the fact that his weight equipment could probably be pawned off for something else, with four wheels, to put in his garage.

“I can outfit a weight room if I have to,” Fairchild said. “Our school right now has one of the better-equipped weight rooms I’ve been to, so I don’t have to. I’ve had to do that before, though.

“You can’t afford to buy those all at once; you just add here and there.” To buy them, Fairchild has taken on odd jobs through the years. A part-time home remodeler, he’s done work on houses to pay for the weights. And he’s helped to improve Caprock High along the way. He’s the defensive line coach there, but the real work comes during the nine months between football seasons. He founded the Banzai Barbell Club, a weightlifting team.

This year, Caprock’s football team ended a 30-game losing streak that spanned three seasons. They finished the season with two wins. But weightlifting is this football coach’s focus. He participates in USA Weightlifting and the NSCA, and has even inspired his daughter, a high school senior, to consider strength training as a career. If she pursues the career, Fairchild’s weight warehouse will continue for years to come. “I’ve got a garage full,” he said. “They don’t depreciate.”

Stephanie Ciarelli
Strength and Conditioning Coach
Huntington Beach High School
Huntington Beach, California


When Stephanie Ciarelli was hired at Huntington Beach High School 11 years ago, she spent her first weekend there cleaning out the weight room. Gone were many of the bench-press benches, replaced with platforms for Olympic-style lifts.

The Olympic lifts – the power clean and snatch, to name a few - are more sport-specific than some traditional lifts, Ciarelli said. “It’s athletic,” she said. “If you break down the lift, you’re doing the same thing in football. A lot of it is that you’re in the same position in football as you are in a power clean.

“There’s no better athletic movement than the snatch in terms of all the things you’re trying to work on – speed and flexibility – that all pertains to football. The more weight you lift and the faster you move it, the more explosive you are.”

Ciarelli’s been training her students to be explosive for years now. She’s involved with the Huntington Beach High football team and is active in USA Weightlifting, having started a club at the high school.

She’s been able to establish a tradition at the high school through – as strange as it may sound – a combination of motherly love and football coach-like sternness with her students.

The adjustment has been fairly easy. When she gets freshmen to start lifting, she has the advantage of being able to lift more than them, “so that ego kinda goes away,” she said.

“It’s motherly – you love and love and love,” Ciarelli said. “But if I get mad, I make them run.”






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