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Building Bodies: Strength-and-conditioning coach at WFU is known for intense strengthening workouts
Jennifer Photo by Jennifer Rotenizer
Ethan Reeve, Wake Forest University's strength-and-conditioning coach helped Duncan Trosan, 13, during a six-week camp at WFU this summer.
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Published: September 5, 2008
It has never been a good idea to kick sand in football player Aaron Curry's face.
But thanks in large part to Ethan Reeve of Wake Forest University, there was a much better chance of getting away with it four years ago than there is today.
Curry showed up from Fayetteville in the summer of 2004 as a linebacker so undersized that no major colleges other than Wake Forest and East Carolina thought enough of him to offer a scholarship.
"I was maybe 200 pounds -- with my pads on," Curry said.
One of the first people he met was Reeve, the Deacons' strength-and-conditioning coach. Reeve, a cheery but earnest former All-America wrestler at the University of Tennessee, saw the potential of a player who, 45 pounds of muscle and four years later, is considered one of the best professional prospects in the ACC.
Quarterback Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada of Navy was giving the Deacons fits last fall before he tried an option run in Curry's direction. Summarily flattened, he was carried from the field as the largest crowd (36,992) in the history of Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium watched in dismay.
While Kaheaku-Enhada was clearing his head, the Deacons were rolling to a 44-24 victory.
Curry was asked recently how his teammates react when Reeve's name is mentioned.
"At first you get a lot of sighs, because you know his workouts are going to be tough," Curry said. "He's a nice person, but when it's time to work, it's time to work. He's about business. I believe he's one of the guys who know ‘no pain, no gain.'
"So when we discuss it, we just try to keep everybody glued together so we can come in as a team, but we don't fall apart. His workouts will break you if you don't have anybody to fall with."
The job of a college strength-and-conditioning coach is to change the baby fat of a fresh-faced teenager into the power and strength of a grizzled man. And nobody in the ACC has done it better than Reeve, who teamed with Coach Jim Grobe at the University of Ohio in 1995 and accompanied Grobe to Wake Forest in 2001. The Deacons will play their first home game of the season Saturday against Mississippi.
Year after year, the players recruited by Wake Forest are ranked at or near the bottom of the ACC for promise and potential. Two years ago, those players won the ACC championship. Last year, those players won nine games and lost four.
Grobe has never made a secret of the Deacons' success -- Reeve is very, very good at what he does. In May, the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association named Reeve a Master Strength and Conditioning Coach -- the highest honor of the profession, given to only 70 in the nation.
"Aaron Curry came in and was really undersized," Grobe said. "From what Ethan has done with him, it's just kind of impressive to see where he started and where he is right now.
"He's not only improved his strength, but he has improved his speed and agility. He's a great example of what can happen if you've got the right guy working with those kids."
Reeve was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1954. His mother, Carol Reeve, was a single parent who taught school. He was the second of five children.
"My mother raised five children as a schoolteacher," Reeve said. "It's the reason I do what I do. I'm still an educator.
"I think of my mother and the lessons I learned when I was young."
Reeve learned some other lessons on the playgrounds of Deming, N.M., where Carol Reeve moved her family when Ethan was in the second grade. Deming, in the southwest corner of the state, 33 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, had its share of tensions between Anglo-Americans and Hispanics.
Those tensions sometimes flared when Reeve and his classmates went outside to play.
"When I was in the fourth grade, the sixth-graders had recess the same time we did," Reeve said. "And these kids would bully the fourth-graders. I just couldn't stand it. I never liked hazing. I've never liked any of that stuff. I never did it when I was in a position of power, or whatever. But these guys would come around and beat up some of the young kids.
"Well, I had this chokehold, and I'd get these guys, and I'd snap them and bring them down to the ground and just get them to tap out or call ‘uncle' or whatever.
"And when they got into the ninth grade, and I was in the seventh grade, they told the wrestling coach, ‘You've got to get this guy for wrestling.' So he did."
Reeve's family moved back to Ohio, to Lancaster, when he was a sophomore, and it was there that his wrestling career flourished. He was good enough to earn a scholarship at Tennessee, where he was All-SEC all four years and All-America the final two.
He wrestled at 150 pounds as a freshman and at 158 pounds as a sophomore, junior and senior.
"He's a tough guy when he needs to be," Grobe said. "He's been there before. He didn't get those cauliflower ears for nothing. That guy has been in the fight.
"But the nice thing is he's a great husband, a great father, and treats our kids like sons."
Reeve coached wrestling at Tennessee-Chattanooga from 1984 to 1990, winning five Southern Conference titles. But with more and more colleges dropping their programs to adhere to Title IX, he changed professions and took a job as the strength-and-conditioning coach at McCallie School in 1990.
While at McCallie, he also was the strength-and-conditioning coach for the U.S. women's rowing team, which won four gold medals and a silver medal at the 1995 world championships.
In 1995, when Grobe became the head coach at Ohio University, he needed a strength coach. He thought he had his man, a strength-and-conditioning coach he knew from his days as an assistant at Air Force.
That was until Reeve walked into the room, slipped a tape of his workouts with the rowing team into the tape deck and handed Grobe a copy of his professional philosophy. Thirteen years later, the two are still working together.
"I got him in and met him and said, ‘This is my guy,'" Grobe said.
The two complement each other well. Both are warm and sincere men who know what it takes to be good and are willing to pay the price.
The players, however, might sometimes consider the price a bit higher than Grobe or Reeve.
"What you want to do is have it intense enough so you can win, but short and challenging so the kids when they leave they can walk out and say, ‘Hey, I can't wait to come back to the next practice -- I can't wait to get back into the weight room,'" Reeve said. "If it's not fun for them, if they don't have a smile on their face when they come in, then my gosh.
"I'm not talking about pizza parties. We're going to work our kids."
■ Dan Collins can be reached at 727-7323 or at dcollins@wsjournal.com.
About Ethan Reeve
■ AGE: 53.
■ BIRTHPLACE: Columbus, Ohio.
■ EDUCATION: Bachelor of Science degree in education from University of Tennessee, 1979.
■ EXPERIENCE: Head wrestling coach at Tennessee-Chattanooga (1984-90). Strength-and-conditioning coach at McCallie School (1990-94). Strength-and-conditioning coach for U.S. women's rowing team (1990-94). Strength-and-conditioning coach at Ohio University (1995-2000). Strength-and-conditioning coach at Wake Forest University (2001-present).
■ FAMILY: Wife, Susan. Daughters Callie, 21, and Erin, 18. Son Keaton, 14.
■ QUOTE: "I enjoy my life. Every moment of every day is a pleasure. I get up in the morning and I put my feet on the ground and I just think to myself 'This is going to be a great day.' I do that every single day of my life."
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