Dec. 14, 2007
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14- 11:52 AM
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Just because a sport is in the offseason doesn’t mean it’s the offseason.
The Omaha Challenge is a prime example.
The Omaha Challenge (TOC) was started by head strength coach John Sisk in 1997 when he worked with baseball coach Tim Corbin at Clemson. In its tenth year of existence, TOC has spread to other universities around the nation, making it the benchmark of offseason skills competitions.
What is TOC? Well, to give you a quick synopsis, at the end of fall practice and workouts, the baseball team competes in four days of rigorous activities to test the physical abilities of every player on the roster.
Here are some bullet points about TOC, which took place last week:
It’s comprised of seven speed, strength and skills competitions over a four-day period.
Players are spilt into four teams and rosters are picked by seniors via a draft (position-by-position draft to keep teams balanced).
For each event, the top six in each group score points for their team.
Events include a tire flip, the prowler push, the two-minute drill, and so on. It’s tough to explain these unless you actually see them. Let’s just say they’re not easy.
The final competition every year is the obstacle course, which combines the previous activities into one grueling event to separate the best from the rest. This usually takes a player anywhere from two to four minutes to complete, and by the end of it, there are few still standing (to be honest, I don’t know how they do it). Check out my pictures below from the obstacle course to get an idea of what it was like.
After TOC concludes, a team champion is selected based on the points earned over the four days, as well as an individual champion among both the pitchers and the fielders. This year’s individual winners are … (drum roll, please) … Mark Lamm and Jonathan White.
OBSTACLE COURSE PICTURES
And like I said before, it is unbelievable how well conditioned our guys are to compete in this sort of event. Hats off to John Sisk and Gabe Teeple from our strength and conditioning program for staging the Omaha Challenge.
Have a great weekend!
