Coach Corey McEldowney is a more recent addition to the Northwest High School staff. McEldowney was hired and started as the strength and conditioning coach on June 1st, 2022.
“I was hired as a strength and conditioning coach as well as the wellness coordinator for the district to implement strength and conditioning class to help our student-athletes in the weight room gain athleticism, strength, and mobility,” said McEldowney.
Over the summer of 2022, McEldowney held workouts practically every day. Summer workouts are split into time slots. The sports that have similar attributes are put into time slots together except for on Tuesdays and Thursdays which are speed and agility days and time slots are split by gender.
McEldowney’s presence in the athletic program and in the school’s weightlifting classes has notably improved performance in many of the school’s sports. Senior Katey Marshall has been in McEldowney’s class since he began teaching and attends a lot of the school’s sports competitions.
“I have seen that overall people are stronger and they know the correct form and are able to achieve it more easily. I have noticed it the most in volleyball the girls are able to get down instead of just standing in an awkward position,” said Marshall.
Before working at Northwest McEldowney was implementing strength and conditioning into different commercial gyms around Jackson mostly with CrossFit gyms.
McEldowney focuses really heavily on injury prevention for a multitude of reasons, but mostly it is to make sure the players can be where they are meant to be, on the field/court.
“Your best ability to most coaches is your availability,” said McEldowney.
There are many other reasons as to why McEldowney’s focus in the weight room lies heavily on injury prevention.
“Training in a very structured setting makes it a lot easier on your body to take on demands in an unstructured setting such as sports because you have spent the time building up a foundation,” said McEldowney.
McEldowney is a coach in every sense of the word. Encouraging, but also strict when need be.
“McEldowney is always down to talk and joke around, but when it comes to getting our workouts done he can be pretty strict. I think it is all warranted though because it is a weightlifting class and if you mess around all the time you run the risk of injuring yourself or someone else,” says Marshall.
Overall it seems that the consensus is that McEldowney was a great addition to the school’s athletic program and that it will be interesting to see how he helps improve athleticism in coming years.
