GREG LUCA | STAFF WRITER
McALLEN — As D.J. Monroe was helping athletes with their sprinting form during Saturday’s speed camp, one remarked that he wanted to improve his 60-yard dash time — the metric most commonly used to measure speed from first to third for baseball players.
“I run a 7.2,” the athlete said.
“Not for long,” Monroe replied.
Monroe, a former running back for the Texas Longhorns, joined up with South Texas Showcase Director BJ Garcia and Jaime Cavazos of the Cavazos Sports Institute to put on a two-hour speed camp Saturday — one of many held around South Texas throughout the summer.
The primary goal of the camp is to show players proper running fundamentals that will enable them to increase their speed after a few months of repetition.
“You aren’t going to get faster today,” Garcia said, “but you’re going to get the skills and tools that you need that if you implement them in your workouts multiple times per week, you’re going to get faster.”
Monroe said the biggest keys to improving velocity are stride length and foot speed. Those were the main points he focused on when he worked with McAllen Memorial graduate Trevor Speights for six months last year, helping him shave nearly two tenths of a second off of his previously 4.51 40-yard dash time.
“That’s all it is,” Monroe said. “It sounds so simple, but that’s all it is.”
On Saturday, a group of seven high school athletes and six younger players ran through drills to work on both their straight-line speed and lateral quickness.
After the athletes took a few passes through a rope ladder, Cavazos made a circle about 5 yards wide with eight motion-sensing lights. When one illuminated, the athlete would shuffle around the outside of the circle and wave his hand above it to turn it off.
Once every athlete had a turn, Cavazos widened the circle to about 10 yards and had the athletes stationed in the middle, forcing them to recognize and locate the light before sprinting to deactivate it.
Participants also trained with bungee straps and a curved, manual treadmill designed to develop proper running technique.
“What a lot of athletes nowadays lack is the fundamentals, and that’s one thing they focus on here: good footwork and good technique,” Edcouch-Elsa quarterback Marco Aguinaga said. “That makes a big difference. Small things make a big change in your times.”
Now the head track and running backs coach at St. Joseph High School in Victoria, Monroe worked individually with each athlete to find their proper form in the 40-yard dash. Among the major points of emphasis were leaning forward and taking a strong first step.
Monroe said he picked up the techniques when he grew tired of losing races in middle school. After being told he was too short to make it at 5-foot-9, Monroe played running back at UT from 2009-12, largely thanks to his 40-yard dash that has been hand timed as fast as 4.25.
He and Garcia hope the lessons they teach at the camps can help Valley athletes follow a similar path.
“Maybe you don’t have the size,” Garcia said, “but the technique can get you by. The things we teach about cutting and about planting, maybe that will give you a little bit of an edge.”