Strength of the program

COLUMBIA — Andrew Berry still remembers the first time he walked into Craig Fitzgerald's weight room.

At Harvard in 2005, new football players were cruising through the facility for a workout tutorial. Well, cruising didn't turn out to be such an operative word for the experience.

A few minutes into the tour, Fitzgerald told the players they shouldn't ever walk into a weight room unless they expected to get better. Evidently, tutorials counted.

Fitzgerald ordered the newbies to rip through 100 pull-ups and 100 curls before the tour would continue. They looked at each other, puzzlingly.

"I thought he was joking," said Berry, an All-America cornerback at Harvard from 2005-09. "It's at that point you say, 'Is this guy serious, or is this guy crazy?' "

That question might sound familiar to South Carolina's football team, which has been getting to know Fitzgerald since January, when he came on board as the team's new strength and conditioning coach.

Fitzgerald's significance in this final month before camp? Huge. He's the only coach allowed to run the players through drills — in effect, practice — until preseason workouts begin the first week in August.

Fitzgerald bemoans the approach of the regular season, in a way. In the fall, he says there are all kinds of bumps and bruises — not to mention those pesky games — that get in the way of his immersive and intensive fitness plan.

In the summer — and especially this month, with the incoming freshmen now on campus — they're all his.

"We love it," said Fitzgerald, a 36-year-old who, thanks to a weight room, willed himself into becoming a player at Maryland. "It's go time. We've got to get it done. There had better be marked improvement."

Evidenced through Berry's story, Fitzgerald is driven to make that happen. Driven bordering on mad. There are tall tales about Fitzgerald, to get guys fired up, asking a player to kick him between the legs.

But, amid the madness, he's also subtly creative.

Fitzgerald brought with him from Harvard the idea of making summer workouts (and winter ones, too) a competition.

Here's the deal: Ten different teams. Eight weeks. Collect points for various lifts and drills. Win enough points, you get out of a drill or two. And you get bragging rights over teammates.

Fitzgerald says some schools have certain days set aside for this kind of thing. But no one really develops the whole program around it.

Listening to him explain it, it makes perfect sense.

By nature, Fitzgerald reasons, football players are competitive beings.

They live and die with wins and losses in the fall. So, why not in the other times of the year?

Further, he says that these players were two- and three-sport stars in high school. There was no such thing as an offseason then; it was all competition, all the time.

"The guys get into it," Fitzgerald said. "They want to win no matter what. The weights suddenly start shooting up, the (running) times go down. It's about more than just the weight or times. They want to win, period."

In a way, it's like the players are tricked into working harder. Well, maybe trick isn't the right word. But the hard work comes easier.

"You're pushing so hard you don't even realize you're pushing hard," fullback Pat DiMarco told Fitzgerald the other day.

Building leadership is also part of the competition equation.

DiMarco, for example, was already well on his way. But this experience doesn't hurt anything.

DiMarco is one of only two juniors put in charge of a summer team. Defensive end Cliff Matthews is the other.

The senior team leaders are defensive tackle Nate Pepper, offensive lineman Lem Jeanpierre, special teams man Scott Spurrier, walk-on linebacker John Guerry, All-SEC linebacker Eric Norwood, safety Darian Stewart and receiver Moe Brown.

"I think coach (Steve) Spurrier's players are showing they think this is important," Fitzgerald said, adding later that participation has been extremely high all summer. "There's toughness being developed, and the guys are showing the commitment."

Fitzgerald has an interesting thought to motivate his players this summer: Don't think you're the only team in America in a weight room right now.

"Every team is training right now. As long as we are, as much as we are," he said. "It's how hard we're working — that's the difference."

Berry said he was torn when learning that Fitzgerald had moved on to the SEC. He hated that Harvard had lost him, but he was excited to see "Coach Fitz" get a chance at the college game's highest level.

"It automatically makes me a South Carolina fan," said Berry, leaving this week to start a job in the Indianapolis Colts front office. "I think the other schools in the SEC had better be prepared, quite honestly."

Reach Travis Haney at thaney@postandcourier.com.

Check out the South Carolina blog at www.postandcourier.com/blogs/gamecocks.