high schools

The idea was hatched before the season: Search the metro area for "The Beast of the Weight Room" among high school football players.

Input from high school coaches kept leading to one name: Champlin Park's Sam Maresh, a 6-3, 240-pound middle linebacker who has verbally committed to the Gophers. A recent visit to the Rebels' weight room revealed a rather refined method to the madness long known as "throwing some weights around."

Familiar questions such as, "What can you bench?" have been replaced by, "What kind of things do you do to strengthen your core?" It's all a little less psycho, a little more physiological.

Said Maresh: "I may be the only 240-pound guy around who can walk on his hands.

"Back in the day it was just squats and bench. Now, when you get up to the collegiate level they're using the medicine ball, the aerobic ball, developing new lifts for different parts of your body. It's getting high tech."

To that end, Champlin Park coach Mike Korton has hired Zach Seraphine, a trainer at Velocity Sports Performance in Champlin, to work with the football team. "The focus is on speed, strength, agility and power, not just lifting for size," Seraphine said. "We increase the overall athleticism of the kids, working on core strength -- the abs, the lower back -- and injury prevention."

What makes Maresh special is his ability to combine new-age techniques with raw power. His name appears on the board in the Champlin Park weight room that recognizes the members of the Elite Lifting club. He has a bench press of 302 pounds, a clean of 271 and a squat of 467.

Maresh said his bench press is down from a personal best of 320, which underscores the goal of building core strength.

Seraphine said Maresh is most impressive in the clean, which involves making a maximum lift from the floor or the waist to the shoulders.

"He's really explosive, which translates onto the football field," Seraphine said. "That explosiveness allows him to get through a blocker and make a tackle. He's got the big body, but he can move around, too."

Maresh said he has been a regular in the weight room since seventh grade. His dad, Bill Maresh, is the freshman football coach and varsity wrestling coach at Champlin Park. Maresh's two older brothers, Tony and Mike, also played football at Champlin Park. Mike Maresh (6-1, 235) is a junior linebacker at North Dakota State and an avid lifter.

Last spring Maresh and his dad came to school early three days a week to do a grueling super-slow workout, which calls for using 10 seconds to lift the weight and five seconds to lower it.

"I gained 20 pounds of muscle mass," Maresh said. "I was like, 'Cool.' We haven't done that this year. I kind of miss it."

Along with being one of the best high school football players in the state, Maresh is a two-time state wrestling champion (215 pounds and heavyweight) and is ranked No. 1 in the state for the third consecutive year.

"It's good, being a wrestler, to be quick with your feet," Maresh said. "I go out on the mat, and the heavyweights can't catch up to me."

Seraphine said Maresh brings a wrestler's mentality into the weight room.

"He hits it hard when he's in there," he said. "He gets done what he needs to get done."