The Program: A season with Oakwood football in 2026, part XII

Nov. 5—FITHIAN — The atmosphere is calm, yet focused. Loose, but not out of control.

As a drab gray sky peeks through the windows of the weight room located near the back of Oakwood High School on the first Monday afternoon in November, Walker Enos stands in front of a squat rack and adds a pair of 45-pound plates on top of the two plates already at the end of the weight bar.

The 6-foot, 300-pound senior who starts at center and at defensive tackle for the Comets’ football team lowers his body underneath the bar.

He then rests the bar on his shoulders, takes a step back and efficiently knocks out two reps of 225-pound squat lifts.

Cooper Lappin, who starts next to Enos along the offensive line at right guard and helps the defense out from his middle linebacker role, then performs the same lifts once Enos is done. A steady stream of music plays through the speakers in the weight room, more as a background noise than anything as conversations easily take place among teammates.

After writing that day’s particular set of lifts with a blue dry-erase marker on a white dry erase board, Oakwood coach Cameron Lee makes his way around the room as he stops to chat with Comets offensive coordinator Zach Girton and some of the players on his roster. About 20 of them are here on Monday shortly after school was dismissed for the day, getting in a 30-minute workout before the Comets leave the weight room to go study film of second-round playoff opponent Brown County and before the Comets go outside for practice.

Oakwood (8-3) is playing meaningful Class 1A playoff games into November that continues this Saturday afternoon with a road game against Brown County (10-0), and the work they have put in while in the weight room is a big reason why.

“It’s the base of football,” Enos said. “There’s no football without the weight room. It’s super important.”

Oakwood senior running back and linebacker Kyler Johnson echoes the sentiment.

“Coach Cam preaches it all through the preseason, during the season and in the offseason,” Johnson said. “He’s always making sure we’re getting in there, and we’re staying in there to get our work done. It means everything on the field.”

Another endorsement from how the Comets train comes from junior wide receiver and defensive back Jaethan Perez.

“If Coach Cam sees you on your phone, he’ll be like, ‘Are you doing your workout? Are you doing your workout?'” Perez said with a laugh. “We’ve got to make sure we’re lifting because that translates onto the field.”

The 5-10, 190-pound Johnson doesn’t have 1,749 yards on 217 carries and an Oakwood single-season record 23 rushing touchdowns just based on his skill. The same holds true for the 5-7, 135-pound Perez, who leads Oakwood with 40 receptions for 682 yards and 10 touchdowns to go along with a team-high six interceptions.

Sure, talent plays a part. But the dedication to what the Comets do in the weight room has played a role in the successful season they’re having.

“It’s been the biggest differentiator from where we’re at now versus where we were with the program we inherited,” said Lee, who played at Oakwood and is now in his fifth season as the Comets coach. “You frequently hear it from other coaches about how physical our team plays. We’ve also experienced more health. Building and establishing a weight-room culture is the first thing you need to do to establish on-field success.”

It was a main point of emphasis for Lee once he became the Comets’ coach in 2022 after his own football career ended. He played five seasons on the offensive line in college at Illinois State and then suited up with four different NFL teams — the New Orleans Saints, the Cincinnati Bengals, the Chicago Bears and the Baltimore Ravens — during a two-year span in 2017 and 2018.

“I had the typical small-town, high-school weight-lifting experience,” Lee said. “I learned a lot, but then went out into the world and went to a Division I school and then played with NFL teams who had those incredible facilities. I learned so much more.”

While some Comets lifted on Monday — it was a lower-body day focused primarily on squats and power-clean lifts — several others were getting in stretching exercises off to the side.

“We pair all of our strength exercises with plyometric movements,” Lee said. “I’ve found out that it’s not just good enough to be the big, bulky guy. The philosophy in a lot of my playing experience was just, ‘Get strong.'”

Getting strong is certainly a goal Lee wants from his players. To him, it’s the first way to make sure a player can get on the field. One particular lift — the power clean — stands out to Lee when it comes to success on the field.

“Power clean is what we deem as the most applicable lift that we attribute to on-field success,” Lee said. “We’re tracking to see how many kids are in our clean club, which means you’re either power clean 225 pounds or 1.25 times your body weight. Our first year here, we had one or two kids who could do it. Now, we’re at 20 out of almost 30 kids. If you are doing that, it’s very unlikely to me that you are not physically able to, at least, hold up on the football field. That doesn’t mean you have the skills or the knowledge. There may be holes in your game, but you are physically ready to do that. That’s where I think we’ve taken the biggest jump.”

Aside from the physical prowess on display in the weight room, another concept Lee wanted to establish was making the weight room more accessible and fun for his players. Essentially making them want to come to the weight room instead of the opposite.

“Especially in football because you have so many different body types and so many different types of athletes, it’s got to appeal to everybody,” Lee said. “That’s what we try to do here.”

The Oakwood players lifting on Monday are basically all starters or upperclassmen. On Wednesdays during the season, the same group will go through an upper-body day in the weight room, with Tuesday and Thursday lifting sessions reserved for younger players in the program.

Enos and Johnson are among the Comets working out on Monday in a spot where they admit they once were intimidated to enter.

“Honestly, at first, there was some fear because you’re around older dudes. Some of them were loud and meatheads,” Enos said with a laugh. “It doesn’t always smell the greatest, either. But once you get to know everybody, it’s a really cool place.”

The bonds and rapport are other by-products of the weight room. Authentic connections made while pushing through the discomfort that comes with lifting hundreds of pounds of weight.

“All year long, we’re in this weight room,” Johnson said. “It brings us closer together as the season goes on, and we’re able to play as a team of brothers on the field.”

Enos, Johnson and the rest of the Comets’ seniors realize their time is dwindling in a space that has occupied so much of their time during their high school football careers. Even after all the summer workouts that Oakwood uses to build their strength before maintaining it during the season, all the early-morning sessions done before the sun rises and all the workouts done after a full day of class, Enos understands the importance of what has gone on in the weight room. He brings up a reference to a popular TV comedy that aired well before he knew what the Oakwood weight room was when discussing the space, too.

“It’s kind of like in ‘The Office,’ when Andy goes, ‘I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them,'” Enos said. “Even though you’re getting up at 5 in the morning and you might have been dreading it, it was still an awesome thing to do, and it was fun.”