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Fifty-one football players got 500 pounds!<br>The electricity in the air was awesome. Tomberlin's team believes they are the strongest team in America. They believe in Golden Hawk football. They believe in each other. They believe they can win the state championship. They believe. The community believes. It is something you can tell your grand kids one day. "Back in high school, I lifted 500 pounds!" Confidence, self-esteem, attitude, loyalty and togetherness: all these essential ingredients that make up a championship team all came to a raging positive boil n just 30 minutes. It was one remarkable scene.<br>Six hundred pounds was loaded onto the bar for the next record. Intensity rose another notch. Eleven players reached this level. Fifty-one at 500 or more and eleven at 600 pounds. Both new national BFS records.<br>Coach Tomberlin shouted above the dim of excitement, "What's the national record for most weight ever lifted?"<br>"Seven thirty," I responded loudly. Tyler Biggins, a huge 290-pound returning starter, stepped forward. Six hundred had gone easy. I felt he had a shot. A new record weight was eased onto the bar: seven 45's on each end, along with a 25 and a 5-pound plate.<br>Everybody was going crazy. Everyone was shouting and chanting, "Tyler, Tyler, Tyler." He chalked up! He tightened the lifting straps around the bar. He pulled with all his might. The bar inched upward. The noise was deafening. Past his knees... then lockout! Tyler did it!<br>What a night. I relearned a coaching lesson. Coaching is more than X's and O's. It is more than periodization and learning the Krebs Ccle. Coaching correctly calls for passion. Coaching correctly means dealing with the human spirit! It means changing lives for the better. It is about leadership and team. It is about building and achieving.<br>No matter what happens in the future to each Golden Hawk football player, they will have a night to always remember. They will always be able to dream big. here he set a new world record 8,891 points a record that still stands today. For Dan, he had proven to himself that he had what it takes to be the world s greatest athlete. ut the public only remembered the no-heighter. To truly redeem himself, and earn the title he so fervently desired, Dan knew he needed the Olympic gold.<br><br>Dan went on to win two more world championships before the 1996 Olympic trials came around. Once again, all eyes were on Dan, and the event they watched most closely was the pole vault.<br><br> I knew it was a big deal, says Dan.  But I wasn t worried in the least. It<br>was no longer an issue for me. I <br>wasn t even worried about the trials.<br> I had one goal; that was the gold. Not the bronze, not the silver. I knew exactly what I wanted and was counting the days to Atlanta. <br><br>He sailed through the trials. In Atlanta, he sailed through the decathlon, holding on to a steady point margin throughout each of the ten events. Dan became the first American to win the decathlon since Bruce Jenner in 1976. His only disappointment was that he did not break his own world record. That is a goal he is still working on.<br><br>Historic Parallels<br><br>For those who follow the sport of decathlon, the parallels between Dan s life and that of the first gold medal decathlete, Jim Thorpe, cannot be ignored. Both were born of mixed races. Both have Irish surnames. Both came from small schools and towns. They have each enjoyed immense popularity and adulation, and also humiliation. For Thorpe, stripped of his medals after a controversial decision by the governing Olympic board, redemption and restoration of those medals would occur only after his death.