The Wenatchee High School football team has earned a new competitive edge through the addition of Blaine Davidson, the team’s new strength and conditioning trainer — a huge time commitment that he’s doing free of charge.

“We’re trying to get a separate football booster club set up to pay him, but right now he’s doing it for free,” junior Marcus Stoll said.

Training the football players during their offseason every day after school for almost two hours in the WHS gym, the team is already seeing improvements. “It will improve us because with myself I saw an improvement in my athletic ability. The reason we lost to Chiawana last year was mostly because they were bigger than us. This [training] can change that,” Stoll said.

“He’s added a lot of injury prevention to the workouts, which is something I think not very many programs focus on,” Coach Scott Devereaux said.

Previously, Devereaux and other coaches had run offseason workouts, but hadn’t had the time to commit to make the workouts effective. “He [Davidson] is at a place where he can donate the time,” Devereaux said.

The team has been working for a month, and already Devereaux has noticed improvements in the team. “We’re getting about 40 guys a day, which is the most we’ve ever had,” Devereaux said.

“We’re getting stronger and closer as a team… We don’t work out individually, we work in groups, and they rotate and change every month or so and mix upperclassmen and underclassmen,” junior Matangisinga Taulango said.