University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Judgment Day
February 23, 2015 | Football, Featured Writers
By Lee Pace, GoHeels.com
The offseason lives of Tar Heel football players have been ratcheted up the last two weeks as the program makes its transition from winter conditioning to spring practice in March and early April.
First there was Judgment day—six hours spread over two days Feb. 12-13 of intense leadership training and team-building under the direction of a former Marine platoon commander.
Then on Monday was the first of coach Larry Fedora's annual Blue Dawn regimen—eight sessions over two weeks of early morning conditioning.
The threads running through both are to help reveal leaders and burnish everyone's leadership skills; hone each player's competitive edge; and push each player to burst through boundaries he'd never broken before.
“We're trying to create as much discomfort as possible,” Fedora says. “We're trying to push guys farther than they think they can go. Then we watch and see how they react. If we get the reaction we want, that's great. If not, we try to push them even farther to create that reaction. This is also when your leaders are going to step up—when things are really tough and difficult. You're going to see in February how guys are going to respond under adverse conditions in the fall.”
Spring ball starts Sunday, March 1, with three sessions planned that week before the University's spring break. The coaching staff was on the road recruiting most of January, and these two off-season initiatives provide a bridge between winter conditioning and spring practice.
First was the “Judgment Day” protocol conducted by a company named The Program.
The Program was founded in 2008 by Eric Kapitulik, a former lacrosse player at the Naval Academy and later a Marine officer who led numerous Special Forces operations in the Middle East. In a December 1999 training exercise, the chopper he and his platoon were riding struck the side of a ship and fell into the ocean. All on board were knocked out and woke up under water with no oxygen or idea of how to escape with more than 50 pounds of equipment strapped on their backs. Seven of them died.
Out of that tragedy was borne the idea for an athletic and leadership development company. The Program's goals are to develop good team leaders and good teammates, and Kapitulik and his staff stress physical and mental toughness, never making excuses and never allowing anyone to make excuses for you. He holds his thumb and forefinger an inch part and says, “That much better,” hammering home the idea that one more rep or one more yard in winter can distill into one more point on the football field in October.
“At some point you're going to feel like you are in that chopper,” Kapitulik says. “You are going to struggle and you need to prepare yourself for that struggle.”
Tar Heel offensive coordinator and tight ends coach Seth Littrell had seen The Program in action at Indiana two years ago and suggested to Fedora it would be a good team- and character-building exercise for the Tar Heels.
“Obviously as a football team we're not fighting for our lives, but there is a lot of carry-over between the military and athletics,” Littrell says. “Leading a group of men toward one common goal is the same. Both the military and athletics put you in stressful situations where you have to perform. It's one thing to perform when it's 70 and sunny. The idea is to put you in stressful situations that force you to react and lead. It's about stressing your body to the max and learning to react in a productive manner.”
Over six hours stretched across two days—the Friday morning session starting at Bowman Gray Pool at 5 a.m.—the players carried 16-foot log poles and 50-pound sandbags across the field. They did squats with a teammate splayed across their back and shoulders. They did jumping jacks, push-ups, mountain climbers and flutter-kicks and did so in perfect unison and cadence and in straight rows and columns—or they started over again. They swam laps and jumped out of the pool to do more pushups and mountain climbers. They tread water wearing heavy sweatshirts and were made to take the sweatshirts off, pass them to a teammate and put on a different shirt—all the while treading water.
“Personally, I learned a lot,” tight end/receiver Kendrick Singleton says. “They taught us true leadership skills and how to communicate, how to think and how to stay focused when you're tired. You have to watch out for your brothers. This will help us grow and learn. I have a new appreciation for leadership and the skills involved.”
“The mission is to become one team, one heartbeat,” adds offensive guard Landon Turner. “They would pick a leader for an exercise, and if it wasn't done perfectly after a certain number of tries, someone else would be moved in. They switched leaders if you didn't get the job done. Ultimately, a team leader is judged by how well they accomplished the mission.”
The pool exercise showed an element of teamwork the players had likely not experienced. Some had strong swimming skills, others were more challenged in the water.
“We had to look after each other,” Turner says. “We competed in teams, and your team wasn't going to win if you didn't help the guy who wasn't as strong a swimmer. You have to support each other. It's definitely that way on a football team and on the field during a game.”
Offensive line coach Chris Kapilovic said Judgment Day was time well-spent as the Tar Heels look to build on a 6-7 season that was dimmed by lopsided losses to end the year against N.C. State and Rutgers.
“We needed this. It really helped point out who the leaders are and who is a good teammate,” Kapilovic says. “It also exposes those who don't care. It made them understand how hard it is to lead if everyone isn't locked in.”
The format for Blue Dawn over Fedora's first three Februarys at Carolina included two days each week of strength and agility drills and two workouts built around running. This year the squad has been divided into eight teams. They are doing the same shuttle runs, tire pulls, sled pushes and cone drills, but now they are competing one-on-one with a player from another team. The results are posted and tallied and compiled over the two weeks.
“There's more emphasis on competition this year,” Turner says. “It matters if you won your rep or not. It's forced me to try harder, to work harder on every rep and every drill. You can't take a break or you're letting your team down.”
“Blue Dawn is about competing every single day, every single rep,” Singleton adds. “We didn't have the record last year we wanted to have. Some games we showed up, some we didn't. We've got to break through to bringing our very best every week, every snap of the ball. When we do that, we'll have a championship team.”
Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace (leepace7@gmail.com) is in his 25th year writing “Extra Points” and 11th reporting from the sidelines for the Tar Heel Sports Network. His unique look at Tar Heel football appears regularly throughout the fall. Follow him on Twitter @LeePaceTweet.
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