Thomas Sumter rejuvenates weightlifting facilities

Thomas Sumter breathed new life into its weightlifting facilities, which it revealed during its homecoming festivities on Oct. 4. Celebrating the school's 60th anniversary proved to be a great time to show off the new digs that will benefit all of its students looking to build a healthy lifestyle but especially its student-athletes.

"It's not just athletics, it's for the physical well-being of all the students," TSA Head of School Ben Herod said. "Some people will really be engaged with athletics, but some people just want to take care of their bodies and understand how to do that. Expanding that all the way down to our lower grades as far as we can and have more middle school PE be able to do weightlifting and understand what to do and how to do it properly, that's a very important thing to me because being healthy throughout your life is an important thing."

The Generals were able to improve the facilities because of an extremely successful golf tournament they hosted on July 12 at Beech Creek. The school raised more than $30,000 to help boost the equipment.

"Everything went really well," Herod said. "All of our volunteers, all of our sponsors, everyone was fantastic. We had athletics involved, development was involved, we had board members there helping and volunteering time. Everything went really well for us to meet our goal to be able to purchase this equipment."

Of course, the new equipment will help the Generals build muscle, but Athletic Director Tanner Brunson is focused on the entire health of the athlete.

"One of our biggest goals as an athletic department is to get our kids bigger, faster, stronger and more explosive. I think one thing that people forget about when it comes to weightlifting is the idea of injury management," he said. "Getting them bigger and stronger ultimately prevents injury. In a school of this size, it's really tough to lose an athlete here or there. That's true anywhere, but it's emphasized at schools that happen to be a tad smaller."

Brunson hopes this new equipment sparks a new passion for lifting with student-athletes. The old equipment certainly did the job, but the weight room needed a face lift.

"I'm a 2015 grad of TSA, and we were using the old racks and old equipment long before I started to be of age for the weight room in middle school," Brunson said. "Our goal is to generate excitement with our weightlifting program because it has benefits, whether it's obvious or not."

Head football coach Stacy Bell was thrilled to get his athletes in the weight room as soon as possible.

"It was very fun. It reminds you quickly that they're young men, but they can turn back into kids real quick. They were just like kids with their toys," he said. "They had to sit on each bench and touch each bar. It was just a real fun experience."

The golf tournament will remain an athletic fundraiser, but the Generals are still trying to figure out their next target area of improvement. A major point of emphasis for Brunson and Herod is making sure that more than one program is able to benefit from upgrades.

"We discuss it with our booster club relatively routinely, and our booster club and athletic department do a good job of identifying things that may better the entire athletic department, rather than just one team," Brunson said.

Herod added, "There's a lot of years we can have a specific goal like we did this year, and some years it will be the overarching goal of it being the booster club's summer fundraiser. All of that goes to the booster club to benefit our students in that way, whether it be uniform rotation or anything else.

"You want to do your best to have something for everybody," he continued. "Some students love football, some students love archery, sporting clays or bowling. Everything for everybody as much as we can, while also not robbing Peter to pay Paul from one sport to the other."