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All-sports conditioning program to begin

Athletic director aims to create all around athletes

Sam Heikell, Sports Editor
Originally published June 15, 2017


Jason Thurston

Jason Thurston

Ballard’s new Athletic Director Jason Thurston plans to incorporate a new workout schedule, one that the whole school can be apart of. The all sports strength and conditioning program will be year round and is set to start this fall.

“In my experience, it is very hard to specialize by sport in strength and conditioning programs at the high school level, and truly not a necessity,” Thurston said in an e-mail. He believes the ability to move quickly and have power in the hips applies to all sports. “Ultimately, explosiveness is explosiveness, whether it’s for soccer, basketball, wrestling or football.”

All workouts will take place before school and help the athletes learn and develop skills in the weightroom that apply to any sport. “While we will see gains in strength for those that commit themselves, the biggest value comes in the ability to focus on little details,” Thurston said. “The morning workouts will also teach discipline. Players will show commitment to their programs by coming to these workouts, and following the little details teach them to be more coachable as well.”

Thurston currently plans on having workouts Monday, Wednesday and Friday for offseason sports and Tuesday and Thursday for in season sports with a flex day on Saturday so the coaches can have more options.

“We’re trying to get some more flexibility with those in season sports,” Thurston said. “The other thing that’s going to help with is not starting and stopping. If I’m an athlete and I stop lifting for three months, then it’s going to take another three weeks to get settled in again.”

The concept of working together as one big athletic department is very important to Thurston and working out together would help to unify all of the sports programs. “I’m excited, I want us to be beaver athletes, not just beaver football players or beaver tennis players,” Thurston said. “I want us to be Ballard athletes. That’s important to me.”

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All-sports conditioning program to begin