Averett University head Strength and Conditioning Coach Samuel Roome has been coaching at Averett for the past 5 years for all of the teams at Averett University.

Coach Roome played football at “Mount Pleasant High School in Mt. Pleasant, North Carolina. For college, I went to a few different ones, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, and Averett University

Roome did not set out to be a strength and conditioning coach but found a mentor who helped him see the possibilities.

 “Honestly my strength and conditioning coach while I played here at Averett is the main reason why I decided to pursue this as my career. Seeing his passion for it and how I could benefit from it as a player made me fall in love with it.”

With so many student-athletes to work with, Roome’s days tend to be long and busy.

 ”Early morning here at the office by 4 am every day and late nights for me or my staff. (We are) usually one of the last people to leave campus.”

Averett has so many different sports that Roome and his staff have to coach and train each team at Averett to get stronger and faster so that they can perform at their best while playing. For Roome and his staff, the most challenging team to train for is football.

 “Football, simply because there is a massive ego surrounding football players and weight lifting. After that, I would have to say the next hardest sport to train would be wrestling. I say that sport because you’re always dealing with guys having to cut weight so their motivation is always down because they are so tired.”

During workouts student-athletes lift a certain amount of weight to get stronger for their sport. The amount of weight depends and depends up the athlete.

 “The student-athletes dictate that themselves. When student-athletes get on campus at the start of the year, we test each one of them in the variables for their team. They are not given a certain weight to get, but they are simply told to attempt what they think they will be able to lift. After that, we do some calculations and we train off of that number until we test again.”

But to Roome and his staff, it’s more about just lifting weights.

“It trains every aspect of sports and life! People usually think that all we do is lift weights and run, but so many of the things we do directly relate to life after sports. We teach life lessons every single day”

Even though Averett is a now a member of the ODAC and faces different competition, that has not changed Roome’s approach.

“Nothing outside of the old (goals). We are pushing to be one of the best schools in the ODAC- top two in the conference.”