Don Bosco’s 14–9 win over Bergen Catholic wasn’t just the result of a good Friday night game plan. It was the product of a program built around culture, strength, and preparation.
A Motto That Matters
Coach Dan Sabella’s team lives by the motto “WE—Win Everything.” It shows up in the weight room as much as on the field. Every rep, every drill, every meeting is a chance to win. By the time Bergen Catholic arrived, Don Bosco was hardened by that mindset.
The Strength Program: Why Monday and Tuesday
During the season, Don Bosco lifts on Monday and Tuesday—the two heaviest teaching and prep days of the week. The reason is simple:
- Load management: By front-loading strength work early in the week. It allows players to recover in time to be fresh for Thursday’s speed work and Friday’s game.
- Toughness carries over: Lifting after a Friday game forces players to reset mentally and physically. Monday in the weight room isn’t optional. Players make a statement that no matter how sore or tired they feel, they build toughness at the start of the week.
- Consistency: Players know exactly when and how lifting fits into the rhythm of practice. There are no surprises. That routine builds confidence.
What They Do in the Weight Room
The Ironmen don’t chase maxes during the season. Instead, they focus on explosive lifts, core strength, and functional movements that keep players powerful without breaking them down.
- Compound movements: Squats, bench, cleans, and deadlifts anchor each week.
- Speed integration: Bar speed is tracked, and lifts are paired with jumps, sprints, or mobility drills. Ensuring the work translates to football.
- Finishers: Short, competitive circuits close sessions—sled pushes, med ball throws, or team challenges that reinforce grit and camaraderie.
Built to Finish
That schedule mattered against Bergen Catholic. By Saturday, players weren’t worn down by late-week lifting. They recovered, built confidence, and entered the game ready to lean on four quarters of toughness. Their tackling, pad level, and swarm to the football proved the strength work wasn’t wasted—it gave them their edge.
Preparation Meets Performance
The weight room gave them the physical and mental base. The staff’s situational prep gave them clarity under pressure. Together, they turned an offseason and in-season process into a statement win that ended Bergen Catholic’s 28-game in-state streak.
Takeaway
A strength program isn’t just about what you lift—it’s about when and why. Don Bosco’s Monday-Tuesday approach reinforces toughness, manages recovery, and keeps players at their peak when it matters most.
Related:
Elevate your game with Modern Football Technology!
Modern Football Technology helps identify patterns and unlock hidden insights with real-time self scout and opponent tendencies while eliminating strenuous hours of manual data entry.
Book Your Demo with Modern Football:
Podcast transcript
Keith Grabowski (00:00)
This week’s National Coach of the Week presented by Modern Football Technology takes us to New Jersey where Don Bosco prep ended Bergen Catholics reign over the Garden State. On Friday night, the Ironmen jumped out early, leaned on their toughness late, and came away with a 14-19 win that snapped Bergen’s 28-game win streak against state opponents. As a result, Don Bosco jumped 72 spots nationally and is now ranked No. 26 in the country by Max Preps.
Leading the way was the head coach Dan Sabella who joins us now. Coach Sabella, congratulations on being named our National Coach of the Week. And before we get into the details of this win, I want to make sure you have the opportunity to also recognize your staff and how they prepared your team for this challenge.
Dan Sabella (00:47)
Yeah, appreciate you having me on here, Keith. our guys really, they worked extremely hard. We thought it was a really a collective effort in all three phases of the game. ⁓ Our coordinators, our position coaches had our guys prepared. This is a big rivalry game for us. So the two teams are very familiar with themselves and being able to, you know, have a few new wrinkles every now and again, as well as being really sound in what you do is so important because these games can.
any given play can make the difference. So really proud of our guys. They’ve been really consistent throughout the year. We got a good chemistry amongst our staff and we’re looking to just keep that rolling all the way through.
Keith Grabowski (01:28)
One of the things you and I talked about before we got going is something that does enable your team to keep it rolling through strong the whole way through. ⁓ at times it becomes a pain point for staffs. I remember back early in my career not necessarily having the best plan for it, but continuing to build your team in the weight room throughout the season is an important thing. it’s ⁓ really got to be handled more than just with lip service and with a spot on the calendar.
You still need that attention to detail. We’d love to hear about your philosophy on that.
Dan Sabella (02:01)
Yeah, well listen, we all know toughness is a big part of football, And you mentioned it, ⁓ you know, not just in the game we won Friday night, but in any game you you want to have that part of your identity and you you want to be able to hang your hat on that, especially late in the fourth quarter. And that’s developed in the off season, right? That’s developed in in your strength and conditioning program. And our special teams coordinator, linebacker coach, strength and conditioning coach, Tank Daniels is…
is our guy and has done an amazing job building that culture as well as a bunch of other guys on the staff who’ve gotten behind that. So making sure it’s really important for us to get two lifts a week all the way through the season. mean, all the way through hopefully the state championship game in late November, early December, being consistent with that. We want our guys, we we tell them, you’re not gonna necessarily get stronger this time of year, but if you can maintain as much as you can from what you gained.
throughout the off season, you’re gonna hold up physically more, we feel like, especially down the stretch, because the wear and tear on your body, right, it takes a toll on everybody, so.
focusing on flexibility and to build into that conditioning. We’re going to condition on Mondays and Tuesdays for sure and make sure that our guys are fresh in the fourth quarter. Again, you focus on that stuff a lot this summer and if you’re not careful sometimes you’re worried about so many other things and maybe you’re not paying as much attention to that. we really, ⁓ I feel like our staff has done a really good job of holding each other accountable to making sure that that’s important to us.
and we stay consistent with it.
Keith Grabowski (03:37)
Yeah, that’s such an important thing in the staff holding each other accountable. And while you have a guy who leads that effort, it really can’t fall just on him. And just thinking back to my days and at the high school level running the weight room, mean, if you stick one guy in there and it’s only important to that guy, it kind of loses its focus. So we’d love to hear logistically, what does this look like for you over the course of the week? When are you doing these workouts ⁓ in particular, the days and?
you how it fits with practice and then how do you run the weight room so that, you know, it does, it’s tough, right? Having practice, hitting the weight room, keeping the energy, it’s a tough thing to do, but how do you guys do it?
Dan Sabella (04:19)
Yeah, I agree with you. It’s challenging because, for example, yesterday we had a JV game on Monday.
you know, who’s playing, who’s not playing, who’s staying back. ⁓ We have a study hall here that we do as well. So just, you know, time’s important to us. ⁓ We have players who have some commutes to get here and whatnot. just just really having that structure and trying to stick to the efficiency of being on time and making sure every minute counts. We’re a Monday, Tuesday lift team. So if you didn’t play in the JV game and you stayed back, we were in the weight room early. We were in the weight room at two o’clock.
our lifts down. Our lifts are 40-45 minutes. We’re going to do an upper body and a lower body day and you know following those up with like I said some flexibility and stretching as well. So two two days, Monday, Tuesday , we’ll then we went up we’ll get up to practice after that as well. Monday’s a little lighter but today’s going to be a heavy work day. So Tuesdays are really like I think most programs. Tuesdays are work day. Tuesday the kids know
It’s gonna be the latest day the week. It’s gonna be the biggest grind of the week. ⁓ We gotta get meetings in there. We gotta get install in there as well. We’re in full pads on Tuesdays. We wanna bang. We wanna have a physical practice on Tuesdays. So being able to manage working really hard but not doing too much is certainly something that we pay a lot of attention to. that’s really the routine we’re in right now. And ⁓ you tweak it when you have to but.
We feel pretty good about it.
Keith Grabowski (05:58)
Yeah, that’s interesting. Mondays and Tuesdays, and I don’t think there’s any right way to do it. Maybe something’s a little bit more optimal than others, but the decision to use those two days, ⁓ why does that fit best for you? Philosophically, what do you like about doing it on those two days of the week?
Dan Sabella (06:18)
Yeah, just being able, know, Friday night is when the majority of our games are. So we feel like the recovery, we have enough recovery. just like you, I’m sure we’ve talked to a lot of coaches and picked a lot of people’s brains on how they do this. And it’s changed a lot over the years, as you and I know. ⁓
I’ve talked to some coaches who they’re lifting later in the week, know, Wednesdays. I’ve even had some guys tell me they’ll lift the day before a game. So you got to do what’s best for you and you got to be willing to keep an open mind. And I certainly try to do that. We certainly try to do that here, but you know how it is, Keith, we’re all creatures of habit, right? You get in a routine a little bit and you feel like things are going in positive directions and you stick with it.
Keith Grabowski (07:05)
⁓ Let’s break down the Monday and the Tuesday lifts and what those look like for you. What are the things you guys are doing on each of those days?
Dan Sabella (07:14)
Yeah, so like we said, upper body, lower body, a lot of core lifts. ⁓ Not going super heavy. We’re going…
70, 75 % of our maxes were going in that eight rep range, three, maybe four sets, depending on the exercise of six to eight reps. Tempo’s important to us. Tempo’s important to us. We wanna we wanna move, we wanna high energy, we want as many coaches that are, as many boots on the ground and coaches in the room as possible walking around the room, motivating guys, again, holding each other accountable, making sure you you got 75 % of what you’re supposed to have on there.
and getting your getting your maximum, getting the maximum effort that we can out of these guys and not something that we’re just going through the motions because if if you’re just going through the motions, you know, you’re probably better off just not doing it.
Keith Grabowski (08:06)
And then from ⁓ the way that the weight room functions, how you’re moving guys through this, ⁓ what’s the organization look like there? mean, you see weight rooms, you’ll see it on social media, guys who are to the strictest where you’d look at all the stations and everybody’s repping at the same time to stuff where it’s loose and guys are walking around getting their work in. How do you guys approach it?
Dan Sabella (08:30)
We try to break it up into skill, combo, and line. So there’s three groups. So imagine two or three exercises per group. And we’re going to put a time on it. Hey, we’ve got 12-minute rotations here, 15-minute rotations. Three sets for each exercise. If you’re done early, get a fourth set in. And guys are certainly moving, but it’s a super set. Three exercises, bang, bang, bang, back to the first one. And then everybody rotates through.
We’re getting as many reps and being as efficient as possible.
Keith Grabowski (09:05)
For guys who might have injuries, how do you handle those? How do you adjust the workouts to make sure that they’re still working at it? I I think the last thing you want for injured guys is that they’re not doing anything.
Dan Sabella (09:18)
Yeah, that’s back to what we spoke about before we came on the air, right? Like just managing and being on top of it. I mean, I can tell you just yesterday was Monday and all of a sudden it’s like three or four guys who weren’t in the lift that are in the trainer’s room and they’ve been in there for an extended period of time. And then you’re talking to them and you’re asking what’s going on. And it’s like, well, you know, it was busy in there and they didn’t get to me for X amount of minutes and stuff like that. And it’s like, well, hey, listen, you’ve got an ankle injury.
why aren’t you out there getting your upper body lifting? And then, you know, when they tell you, all right, it’s a good time for you to get in here and get your treatment, then you leave the workout. You don’t just sit there for 30 minutes, right? And when you could have been working out. So that’s all part of it. And I appreciate you bringing that up because you can always get better at stuff like that, right? So then you go out and you condition and you’re on the field. And again, guys who… ⁓
you know, again, we’ll go back to that ankle injury. Well, he better be on the rowing machine, you know, getting some type of conditioning. And so you got to be creative. You got to lean on your staff and try to work together as best as possible.
Keith Grabowski (10:23)
Yeah, I remember one of my friends who coached and I think he got it from his college. He went to Mount Union or got the idea from someone there at least because they ran into a string of injuries. He took over a program that needed help. So they took their just plain white practice jerseys and put a big red X like, you know, the medical X or cross on it. And those guys really quick because he also then had the trainers could identify those guys and
they weren’t allowed to just stand around. And so real quick, it solved that issue. I think you do have to be creative, attentive with it, or guys will slip through the cracks. mean, there’s just, you we’ve got big teams, rosters, it’s hard to manage everybody. So for him, that was the way, one, to identify who those guys were, and two, to have a plan for them.
Dan Sabella (11:12)
Absolutely, great idea. That’s an excellent example.
Keith Grabowski (11:17)
Yeah, he said the numbers dwindled really quick on ⁓ the guys who were injured, right? So, hey, we know those, especially when you’re in a new program, there’s those guys who, you know, got a question why they’re there. So I think that sorts it out real quick. Last thing, coach, from ⁓ just a record keeping standpoint, I know a lot of coaches ⁓ during the off season certainly use a number of things to keep track of where their guys are at. Do you guys record anything? ⁓
Dan Sabella (11:23)
in a minute.
Keith Grabowski (11:46)
during this time and if so, what do you use?
Dan Sabella (11:49)
To be honest with you, we don’t. Maybe that’s something we should think about. ⁓ Our training staff certainly does a nice job of tracking injuries and communicating with us and all that stuff. And we have gotten into the off season a couple of years ago with shoulders, a couple years before that it was ankles. So you always want to do ⁓ a little bit of a…
self dissection, right, going into the off season about maybe we need to focus more on ankle stability stuff or, you maybe we need to look at, ⁓ you know, what type of drills we’re doing in practice that are leading some of these shoulder injuries or whatnot. But as far as tracking the data, we weigh our guys in once a week. So we’re always we’re always checking their weights and trying to do a good job with hydration and making sure we’re keeping weight on the guys we need to keep weight on. But ⁓
most part pretty vanilla as far as that goes.
Keith Grabowski (12:46)
Yeah,
you you bring up the injury side and tracking it. I think one of the smartest things when I was at Baldwin Wallace University, we had excellent trainers from the Cleveland Clinic. Our head trainer every, I think it was Monday, would come in to our staff meeting and want the list of clips where players got hurt in the game and or practice. And they would look at those too. And they would look at…
you know, what are they finding? Was there a deficiency in technique? How did this injury happen? And, you know, it’s not going to solve all the problems, but it certainly starts to come to light. And remember, you know, another college I was at, you know, the season before in particular had a really high percentage of knee injuries and went back and looked at, how are we developing them? Were we hitting everything we needed to? And found that there could have been, and I wasn’t there at the time, but, you know, the previous season and the off season.
overdevelopment of, I think it was their quads. And so we had to refocus how we were doing things, but those things matter too. And being able to, like you said, have some kind of method of at least at some point being able to track those things I think is important.
Dan Sabella (13:55)
Sure.
Keith Grabowski (13:57)
So coach, ⁓ you guys ⁓ obviously have some big games ahead of you here. I really appreciate you taking the time to share some of your insights and congratulations on the win and being named our national coach of the week and best of luck to you and the Ironman as you continue your season.
Dan Sabella (14:13)
Thank you so much, Keith. We’re really honored to be here and appreciate all you do for the great game of high school football.
Keith Grabowski (14:19)
Okay, this is for the outro. One second here, I can’t find it. Okay, here we go.
The National Coach of the Week is presented by Modern Football Technology. If you and your staff want to gain an edge with real-time analytics, it’s not too late to get started. With this simple interface and quick onboarding, you can be up and running by Friday night. Visit modernfootball.com to book your demo and learn more. Follow all we’re doing at coachingcoordinator.com and follow us on X at Coach K. Grabowski.