In the past, CCHS athletes and students have been widely absent from legitimate weightlifting. Sure, you had summer workouts and the occasional serious lift session in your physical education class, but usually that amounted to nothing in the big picture of lifting. Why is this? Well some may blame their coaches and others may blame their physical education teachers, but in reality, most of this really circles around to two things: opportunity and motivation. Motivation is the most important thing to legitimately working out and staying in the gym. Without motivation, I can promise you from experience that you will find it extremely hard to be doing any lifting, let alone consistently. This is where Coach Smith’s Terrier Titans program comes into play. 

Terrier Titans is an original program that Coach DeAndre Smith came up with last year in search to motivate CCHS students to lift more in school, and out. Smith makes a similar claim saying “Our school really struggles with students getting in the weight room all around,” so with Terrier Titans, this is his way of getting students to seek interest in lifting more, along with maybe even getting to see a smile put on their faces. In the weightroom above the entrance, you will find the strength records board, which has a chance of getting updated each time it’s max week, or if you have a confirmed max at an athletic practice.

With this, you find competitiveness being a major drive for many students to get out and lift more in order to maybe see their own name on the board. Coach Smith highlights the students that show hard work and determination throughout each week, which can be a big motivator to students. At the end of the semester, each and every student that was a Terrier Titan during the week will be rewarded with some kind of incentive whether it be a pizza party or some kind of food.

Coach Smith says that ways Terrier Titans may benefit students include “helping boost their confidence, help motivate them to lift better, and motivate other people and make them feel uplifted in order to work towards being a Terrier Titan.” So far in the program’s history, we have seen positive results and a ton of new interest in the program, so much so that other teachers like Coach Hankey have had to pick up another strength training class in order to fit all the students. We hope to see even more students show interest in the program as this year’s school year goes on, spreading more motivation into the student body to get in the gym and get bigger.