With the start of its third day of organized team activities looming, I sat down briefly with Catholic Head Coach Gabe Fetitta.
I ask him about the upcoming coming season and how excited he is to get back to football again. “Just to see the kids.” said Fetitta “I was more worried about their mental health, while they were gone than anything. Just to have them back, and being around each other, and being around the coaches. I think that’s the number one thing that I’m excited about. Just seeing them be happy.”
You could see that happiness on the teams’ faces today. Defensive coordinator Deuce Harrison came over the loud speaker prior to dynamic warmups saying “I need a Finucane scream!” (Connor Finucane was a very vocal leader on the Bears defense that graduated in 2020.) Seconds later someone in the end zone lets out a yell. That area of the end zone starts to laugh. “I know none of them were happy being cooped up in the house for the two months, we’re excited and I know the kids are.” said Fertitta
During the quarantine period, the Bears’ coaching staff designed a program that kept their athletes in shape not only physically but mentally too. “We had a bunch of zoom meetings we would meet with them periodically, week-to-week.” said Fertitta “A lot of that was to see how they were feeling. A lot of the online school that we were doing during that time was pretty intense. In a lot of cases, the kids said it was way more alert than being in school every day. So our number one goal was just seeing how they are doing, seeing how they are handling their school work every day.”
On the physical side of things the Bears seemed to not miss a beat in the two month hiatus. “We sent them workouts.” said Fertitta “We filmed some workouts with our coaches with some school bags filled with bricks. So they could do some exercises if all they had was a school bag and some bricks they could get some workouts in. We really sent out two separate workouts every week. We sent out a workout that was essentially a body weight type workout, and then one that was for guys that had access to a home gym and things like that.”
Coming back from quarantine you would think that because of the lack of facilities or the lack of supervision athletes would be out of shape. But that was not the case with Catholic. “When we came back on Tuesday I thought our guys would come back in pretty good shape.” said Fertitta “I never doubted that they would, but I was blown away by how in shape and how ready to go they are. Tuesday was like we had been at it for the past two months.”
Coach Fertitta tells me that, aside from a kid that is on vacation or playing in a baseball game. That participation is at 100 percent.
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