GOLDEN'S PIRATE FACTORY: "We build Pirates, that's what we do."

When Skip Holtz was hired in early December of 2004, he knew that he needed to change the Pirates' losing attitude and upgrade the talent while laying a solid foundation for the years ahead. This would be accomplished largely by the Pirates' strength and conditioning program. Holtz knew just the man to hire.

Mike Golden, who was Holtz's strength and conditioning coach at the University of Connecticut in 1998 before eventually joining him at the University of South Carolina in 2002, was undoubtedly the man for the job. In all, Golden spent three years at UCONN (1998-2000) and four at USC (2002-2005).

You would be hard pressed to find a more intense individual than East Carolina strength and conditioning coach Mike Golden. In Golden's time as a Pirate since his hiring in mid-May of 2005, he has put Pirate football players through equally intense workouts.

The ECU players have undergone a tremendous transformation and the players, coaches, and fans are already raving over how much better this year's team looks physically compared to other recent teams. This Pirate team is not only much more physically imposing, but it is also much stronger and faster.

Golden says that there is no doubt this year's team is light years ahead of last year's in these areas. Last summer, an excessive amount of time had to be devoted to rectifying conditioning issues, but this year the primary emphasis was where it should have been—on speed work, strength work, agility and so forth.

"There were just some things that guys weren't ready to go to that next level. Conditioning was our number one role. Coach wants a real high, up-tempo practice. He wants the games to be up-tempo. So we had to get that conditioning form first and then the other stuff was secondary—the speed work, the strength work, and all that. And finally we have had over a good year under our belts so we are light years away from where we were last year. There is no comparison. I mean, if you walked out on the field and look at us this year, the same guys, compared to last year, you wouldn't even recognize half of them. They have really worked hard all year."

Golden notes that there is a very fine line between pushing a guy to his limit and pushing him too far. It is his job to find this threshold and push it to its max, but not cross it. This is contingent on building trusting relationships with the athletes.

"Once they trust you and know that everything you're doing is to help them get better, you can get away with a lot more and can push them a lot further. Just going out there and yelling at a guy, anyone can do that. They have to know that you're going to put your neck on the line for them."

He also states how critical it is to tweak your approach to the individual team by evaluating where the players are.

"I have a certain core of things of what I want to do. But you also have to be smart and see where your players are. If we had done this summer's workouts with last year's guys and where we were, we would have had everybody in the training room. We wouldn't have been able to practice."

The 2006 Pirates have improved in every facet, but coach Golden notes that the most improvement has been seen in quickness.

"I think the biggest thing that we've improved is our quickness—getting from point A to point B as fast as you can. Everything has improved with this unit, without a doubt, we have gotten stronger, we've gotten bigger, we've gotten faster, but the quickness I think because we're so much stronger and their conditioning is there, they can get from point A to point B much faster than before."

The newfound stability and continuity present in the East Carolina football program has bred a confidence in the Pirate players that hasn't existed in recent years.

"Strength wise, football wise, they've been in the same system for two years. And here I don't think that has been the case for four or five years. The confidence level is up because of being in the same system for two years."

As solid as this team's work habits have been, this is still a reasonably young team; however, the leadership has been superb nonetheless.

"The leadership of the older guys has been unbelievable. We're a young team, but we don't act young. We redshirted a lot of kids last year, and they worked out a lot more than everybody else. They had those Friday morning workouts and did all of those things. They are just a very mature team, a very serious team."

Coach Golden has stated on multiple occasions that he has been extremely pleased with the blue-collar approach that this team has taken.

"This is the hardest working team I've ever had in ten years. They gave us every drop of sweat, every drop of blood—everything they could give."

East Carolina has traditionally prided itself on outworking its opponents, and this team is no different. Golden has assured the Pirate players that no team is working any harder from a strength and conditioning standpoint.

Anyone who commits to playing football at East Carolina can expect to be pushed to the max and the coaches are very forthcoming in relaying this expectation to recruits during the recruiting process.

"The one great thing here is our coaches—our coaching staff, our strength staff—are very honest with recruits. If you're not going to work hard, this isn't the place for you."