Cardinals

“Then we can have up to 50 guys, so I’d have my whole team. We’d spread them all out 6 feet apart in the weight room and outside.”

O’Donnell expected his players to be out of shape because the schools and gyms were closed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. He knows every team is in the same situation and vowed to have his players ready for the season.

“Everybody is in the same boat because the gyms are all shut down,” O’Donnell said. “To get these kids ready to go play football in a couple of months is my responsibility. I think it’s totally doable.”

The school is in the process of renovating its weight room and furnishing it with new equipment.

“It’s something that needed to be done,” O’Donnell said. “We needed a strength and conditioning coach and we needed new equipment in the weight room. It needs to be somewhere where everyone wants to be all the time. We spend most of our year in the weight room. So that place needs to be somewhere where we want to be and where we can be and it’s home.”

O’Donnell is in his second season at the helm of the Cardinals’ football program. He is working on establishing a culture and sees the weight room as a key piece to the operation.

“If you want to change to a winning culture, you have to have those kinds of things,” O’Donnell said. “Your culture, to me, starts in the weight room and that’s where you’re going to make football players.”

O’Donnell served as the faculty manager for winter sports. During the season, he also realized that there was room for improvement in other sports outside of football.

“It’s something that we need to do across the board here at Brookside,” O’Donnell said. “We need to get bigger, stronger and faster. “When you take the field ... you need guys that are ready to compete, who are bigger and stronger.”

O’Donnell knows if his team puts forth effort in the weight room, it will help yield results on the field. Brookside hasn’t finished with a winning record since 2015, including 2-8 last year.

“Our big (football) guys need to get bigger and stronger. Once they do that and put in the time and effort, the football field stuff will take care of itself. It’s a confidence thing. When you are used to losing, to take that jump to being a winner, it starts in the weight room. It starts in competing so we have to do the best job we can to create that environment of winning and competing.”

After spending months at home away from their teammates, several Cardinals players were happy to be back on the field with their team.

“It feels good and it’s exciting to be back out here after a long time off,” junior Kenny Grobolsek said. “It’s pretty exciting.”

Junior Karson Nail continued to work out at home.

“I definitely took advantage of the time,” Nail said. “It was good to get myself ready and I had to count on all of my teammates to do the same during that time. It showed today, we had a pretty good workout.”

Some players didn’t have access to weights, so they had to use anything at their disposal. Nail said he had to get creative and flip tires.

“It was different because we didn’t have the weight room,” senior Matthew O’Donnell said. “We had to find and use other things to help us get stronger, better and faster and get ready for the season. I usually just use what I have at home and if I didn’t have anything, I’d go to the park. I run a lot.”

O’Donnell oozed confidence when speaking about his coaching staff and players. He sees the potential in them and is excited about where his program is headed. After having 28 total players on the team in 2019, there are about 19 incoming freshman alone this upcoming season. O’Donnell expects the team to have about 40 players for 2020.

“Last year, I’d come out to practice and (wonder) if we had enough guys for 11 on 11,” O’Donnell said. “Our guys were great at doing that but this year, it’s a different feel. They see that someone cares, not that they didn’t before, but they see that this is the way it’s going to be and these are our expectations and we have to do it. You see things progressing.”