The past two weeks have been insane for the new Head Strength and Conditioning coach for Panther athletics, Sean Edinger from Central Missouri.

“I got in last Saturday evening at about 5 o’clock, and Sunday at 4 we had our first football workout. We immediately had to come up with a brand new program, scrambled to get numbers, a new running calendar and implement the whole deal with 24 hours to get it done,” Edinger said.

Edinger had such a quick turnaround from getting hired that he only had 10 days to wrap up at Central Missouri. He arrived with one car load and crashed on coaches’ couches for two days before subleasing the sublease of former coach Lee Taylor, who left Eastern for the University of Tennessee after arriving only in January.

The swift adjustment time has given Edinger plenty to look over and do, but the people around him have helped.

“Everybody has been very receptive to having someone new come in,” he said. “It’s not like I’ve pulled the rug out from anyone or tried anything new, other than that it’s been par for the course. The onus is on me to come in and see how everyone else has been running with their teams.”

Edinger will oversee conditioning for football, men and women’s basketball and volleyball over the course of the six-week session before Training Camp for football kicks off on Aug. 1.

In this short time, he has taken weight room maxes (bench press, back squat, hang clean) and projected where athletes should be at the end of the session.

“Setting new personal records is a huge deal,” Edinger said. “Doing better than you’ve ever done is really the whole purpose of us training.”

As for the conditioning side, Edinger will use a free-flow template for the summer using a seven-week progression.

“Athletes aren’t expected to be in game-shape on day one,” he said. “Our goal is to make sure we produce the most ready athlete we can come time for training camp. We want to push them, but we want to do it safely.”

Edinger believes that the real trick to coaching is being able to get the most out of your athletes for the day. It will take time to get to know them all, but he is confident in his current approach.

“At this point it’s just trying to learn the guys and implement the training that I need to do for them,” Edinger said.

Joshua Bryant can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].