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Temple football takes summer workout to the Rocky steps

The Owls wanted to "show tribute to one of the greatest cities in the entire world."

Strength and conditioning coach David Feeley (center) encourages the Temple football team as the players do a Rocky-like workout on the Art Museum steps.
Strength and conditioning coach David Feeley (center) encourages the Temple football team as the players do a Rocky-like workout on the Art Museum steps.Read moreDavid Maialetti / Staff Photographer

The Temple football players climbed the 72 steps at the Art Museum on Wednesday morning — two at a time, three at a time, on one leg, even on their hands. Their breathing, even at first, later came in huffs and puffs, and sweat dripped from their heads and ears onto their cherry red T-shirts.

"Take your time coming down!" one player suggested, apparently looking to conserve energy on his way to the bottom.

The strength and conditioning coaches had different ideas. "Let's go!" one barked. "Hurry up!"

"I think [Rocky] just did it one time," said fifth-year senior fullback Nick Sharga, who ran the steps probably a dozen times. "It looked kind of tough."

This Philadelphia landmark, hard by the Rocky statue and the gem at the end of the Ben Franklin Parkway,  gave the Owls a unique summer workout. Before the three team buses pulled up at 8:25 a.m., the iconic scene was almost empty. So the players swarmed and ran up the steps, each trip more difficult than the last. Once they hopped on one leg. Another time they did a wheelbarrow drill in which one player walked up on his hands while another held up his legs from behind.

On this rare trip outside their on-campus weight room, they trudged up toward the museum in one direction and hustled down toward the city skyline in the other.

Why here?

"We want to show tribute to one of the greatest cities in the entire world," said strength coach David Feeley.

When they finished their 30-minute workout, the 80 or so players grabbed cheesesteaks (what else?) off the bed of a pickup truck.

"I was kind of expecting it to be super hard," Sharga said. "Maybe I was expecting to see a little more stairs. But we got through today."

Before the workout, the players had done squats in their weight room. Seconds after they stormed off the bus, they took up the entire width of the steps, leaving any other stair-climbers only the sides.

At the end of the workout, like boxer Rocky Balboa in the original movie, a handful of players raised their fists above their heads. Feeley, responsible for the team's summer training program, sought this opportunity as a change of pace. And he wanted to celebrate the city.

"That's who we are," he said. Philadelphia. "That's what we're going to continue to be."

As for the next road trip, will it be this tough?

"The next step is the Washington Monument," Feeley said of Washington's 555-foot tower.  "That's really it. Any of the teams in D.C., I think they're the only team that has us beat."