By Mitch Bach

Rattlers put to the test in first annual combine

Aug 21, 2017 | 3:00 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Stop watches, barbells, fluorescent pylons and a coach-loving-player-loathing pedantic beep.

It’s far from a typical day in the Snake Pit for the Medicine Hat College Rattlers. No bouncing basketballs or volleyballs, the golf clubs stowed away, and although a large crowd gathered at the soccer pitch, the goal posts are no where in sight.

With a few weeks remaining until the 2017-18 ACAC campaign swings into high gear, the Rattlers faculty decided to switch up their usual pre-season festivities with its first ever combine on Saturday.

“I ran (the idea) by a couple of out coaches,” said sport & wellness manager Terry Ballard, noting Keyano College in Fort McMurray held something similar six or seven years ago. “A couple of them really liked it, it just got a bit more momentum so we decided to put it together.”

Dozens of Rattlers athletes from all 10 sports teams laced up in five drills, including the bench press, 5-10-5 agility test, vertical test, and the 40-yard dash. To cap off a physically demanding day, everyone gathered on the soccer field for the ever-exhausting beep test.

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“I don’t think anyone likes it except for coaches,” laughed Ballard when asked about the beep test. “When you become a coach as an ex-player, you like it a lot more. It does help set a fitness standard for the top level and the bottom level.”

Women’s basketball coach Clayton Nielsen paid close attention to a few select drills, including the beep test.

“The 40-yard dash for sure, the 5-10-5 agility one, and then obviously the beep test,” said Nielsen, who’s entering his second year as bench boss for the women’s program. “Those three are the big ones, they’ll tell me a little snap-shot of where we’re at as a team.”

Contrary to other national and international combines such as what the NHL and NFL put forth, Rattlers coaches are not using the results to pick and choose their rosters. 

Nielsen says the results from each drill will set a bar for each individual player to work on improving over the season.

“If we just do it today, and we don’t do any for the rest of the year, then it won’t really mean anything,” he continued. “We’ll do some more of the tests again at the end of September to see how our training has gone, and we’ll do it in December to see if out fitness has gone down. I think a lot of the coaches here will do some of these tests again.”

The Rattlers aim to make the August-combine an annual event, which also helps tackle Student-Athlete Orientation, according to Ballard.

“We do that in the first week of school usually, and it’s just another added stress we give to these kids when they’re coming back,” he said. “We thought we’d do that today too, so we’ve got that out of the way. We don’t have to burden them with the first week so it worked out really well.”

Ballard says gauging each athlete on their fitness level and keeping documented results creates inter-Rattler competition as well, which can create a more dominating program in the long run.

“Now that we have records of it I think it’ll go down year after year with people saying ‘what’s the highest beep test’,” he added. “Someone will want to beat that next year, and that’s what we want.”

The Rattlers officially kick off the 2017-18 regular season on the soccer field, with both men’s and women’s teams welcoming Lakeland College on September 9th.