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A Balancing Act
Q&A with SDSU's Rahn Sheffield
Sept. 23, 2003 SAN DIEGO - Rahn Sheffield is in his 18th season at SDSU and his 13th year as head coach of the Aztec women's cross country and track and field squads. Sheffield is also the head coach of his own track club, Sheffield Elite, and acts as a conditioning coach during the summer for professional football players from across the nation. A 1980 SDSU graduate, he recently added extra duties on The Mesa, overseeing the Aztec football team's strength and conditioning program. Earlier this month, Sheffield took time to reflect on football and his favorite Aztec memories. Q: What are some of your goals with the football team's strength and conditioning program? A: My goal is to make sure that these athletes are faster and in better shape than any other college football program in the nation, whether they're playing at altitude or at sea level. You don't have to be a blue-chipper to beat a blue-chipper, but you have to be able to outlast your competitors and function on a high level as a team. Q: What will be your main focus with the football team? A: I'm going to be focusing on technique and getting them in shape, but each person also has to be accountable. We have 90-plus athletes who need to have an understanding of why they're doing certain workouts, what energy systems it attacks, how long they should be doing it and at what interval they should be resting. It's a lot to handle at once, so I think we're going to have to go back to school. Q: How did you get started doing off-season conditioning training with professional football players? A: It started with Ronnie Harmon, who played with the Chargers. He just showed up on the track one day and said that he wanted to get in shape. Of course, because it was my first encounter training a football player, I tried to kill him. I threw everything and the kitchen sink at him and this guy would not go away. Pretty soon, he definitely earned my respect and we ended up the best of friends. After that it was word of mouth and really grew out of control. Some people started flying down and living in hotels just to train with me, which they still do. It's great in my spare time, because it makes me a lot sharper as well. It makes me think of different ways of getting athletes to the mountain top. Q: What's your best memory as a coach? A: My best memory will always have to go back to my sister, LaTanya Sheffield, because I've always gotten the athletes who didn't have the talent to get a scholarship coming into the University. I have a saying as an Aztec, "We don't buy blue-chippers, we build them." That's a solid statement. She came here without a scholarship and within two years she broke the American record in the 400 hurdles, which lasted over a decade. Q: What do you think are the biggest changes between athletes today and when you first started coaching? A: They're not as tough and as passionate. Before we competed because we loved competition and that's what we were all about. Now you have people dodging races because they don't want to mess up their rankings. You have people not running because they don't feel like they're paid enough, or how about this, they're just soft. You have the athlete of the early 80's - very tough and loved to compete. I miss that and I refuse to lower my standards to make anyone happy. You don't want to step up to my standards, than you can stay down in yours. Q: Talk about last track season. Did you ever expect to win the Mountain West Conference title? A: Last year when we first started, colleagues of mine called (our team) misfits, because we had transfers from other universities and walkons - people more or less that other people didn't want and wondered why we gave them scholarships. They said we couldn't win anything with the team that we had. This team ended up as not only great athletes, but great warriors. We're talking 22 athletes going against 32 athletes. We're talking about a team that was going against not only (reigning conference champion) BYU's athletes, but tradition. For 20 years, since the beginning of track and field, that (BYU's) was the longest (conference) winning streak in the nation. Everyone on this team had to run five to six events and there's not a team in the nation that can handle that but one and they wear a seal of an Aztec. Q: If you had to pick just one of your coaching jobs, what would it be?
A: I'm an Aztec - straight through, cut to the bone. The Aztecs are part of me and part of my heart. That's what makes me whole, which is an easy choice to make, because you walk out there and get a chance to change and shape lives. What we do makes great memories that last a lifetime. It's as simple as that.
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