Thomas County Central High School’s football program has enjoyed unparalleled success in recent years, with two state championships in the past three seasons under head coach Justin Rogers. With the recent completion of a new weight room on the Thomas County Central campus, Rogers’ football program and all of the Yellow Jackets sports teams will now have the opportunity to continue making their athletes bigger, stronger, and faster than ever before.
Advantage Sport & Fitness recently completed construction on a new 6,000-square-foot weight room that provides brand-new, state-of-the-art equipment and a venue that will benefit all of the school’s athletic programs.
“It’s been a game changer for our entire athletic program,” Rogers said. “This facility allows us to train at a championship level every single day.”
Rogers said the secret to success, whether it’s the Yellow Jackets football team or any of the other Central programs, starts in the weight room.
“The weight room is the foundation of everything we do, no doubt about it,” Rogers said. “This is where discipline is built, where toughness is developed, and where our kids learn how to push themselves beyond what they thought was possible.”
Rogers said he was impressed the first time he laid eyes on the new equipment.
“When you walk in, you can feel the energy,” Rogers said. “It’s a place where hard work happens and where success starts. Everything in here is just first class. It’s quality, and it’s heavy duty, so it’s functional, which is, of course, what it’s mainly for, but aesthetically it looks good too.”
One of the big advantages of Thomas County Central’s new weight room is the layout of each of the training stations, which maximizes efficiency in workouts. Many of the workout stations feature double-sided racks, which enable work to be done on both sides of a station at the same time, allowing more people to use less space.
“We pretty much have things set up to where you have almost two weight rooms on each side of the space,” said Nick Obey, Advantage Sport and Fitness regional sales manager. “We have 60 pairs of dumbbells to service 20 stations. We want to make sure we maximize every square foot of space.”
That was important to Thomas County Central strength and conditioning coach Jay Floyd.
“Our biggest thing is efficiency, being able to do everything we want to do,” Floyd said.
Both Rogers and athletic director Philip Duplantis emphasized how the new weight room would benefit everyone at Thomas County Central.
“Everyone will use the weight room,” Duplantis said.
“It’s not just about football,” Rogers said. “Every sport at TCC benefits from having access to a space that’s built for development, accountability, and competition. It’s given our student-athletes a sense of pride and ownership, and it reflects the standard we’re trying to set across the board.
“Having a top-tier environment gives our athletes the opportunity to maximize their potential physically and mentally, but more importantly it allows us to coach effort, consistency, and accountability every day. That’s what builds championship teams, and that’s what ‘The Standard’ is all about.”
Duplantis said that he, Rogers, Floyd, and the school’s other coaches are very satisfied with the results.
“It’s provided a perfect situation for our athletes to get the most out of a weight room that they can,” Duplantis said. “We want to make these players the best version of themselves possible.”
