The most important, or at least most visible to the players, member of the Penn State football staff in summer is Chuck Losey. Penn State's assistant athletic director for performance enhancement guides the Nittany Lions through two of their least-favorite seasons: winter workouts and summer training. He's the football staff's eyes and ears in the weight room and Holuba Hall, where the players work out of the spotlight.
The summer schedule continues for about six more weeks before moving into training camp, where Losey will turn over the roster to Penn State coach James Franklin and his staff. The gains the players make in June and early July will show up in November.
Losey recently conducted a media session to discuss Penn State's offseason plans. Losey praised several Nittany Lions, notably running back Nick Singleton, and delivered a primer on the rest of summer drills. Here's some of that Q&A with Losey:
Q: What are the keys to the next six weeks of training?
Losey: No. 1 is always our leadership; developing leadership at this time of the year, because we're coming down to the end of it before fall camp starts. Our leadership has to be dialed in at the end of this six weeks, because what you've got at the end of this six weeks going into the fall camp is pretty much what you've got until mid-January, early February.
Q: Have you noticed any leadership gains among the wide receivers?
Losey: I've mentioned that Julian [Fleming] has been really good in that room since he came in at the mid-year point. Just having an older presence in there for those other guys, it's been great. But I'm really, really happy with Liam Clifford, and his development, physically and maturity-wise, and his ability to take ownership as a leader in the room and take those younger guys and just basically tell them what to do and give them guidance. I think Liam has found a voice in that sense. And he's taken a leadership role. And I think having Julian around, an older guy in the room with him, I think that's helped Liam.
Q: How is Julian Fleming progressing?
Losey: I'm impressed with him. He's a big-bodied guy and he didn't time well when he first got here. That's not a knock on him by any means, because he has such a big body. But when you compare his initial baseline testings to the rest of our wideouts and the way they move at that position, he was definitely a step slower. He's closed the gap. He's done a great job. You know, speed is a huge thing for him that we addressed early and he's in a really good spot right now.
Q: Where is Abdul Carter in his transition to defensive end?
Losey: Size-wise, he's exactly where he should be. Part of that is because we’ve got such good competition at defensive end. That room is crammed full of guys young and old who compete. There’s a lot big bodies in there for that position. If you think about Dani [Dennis-Sutton], if you think about Amin [Vanover], we've got some big-bodied defensive ends in there compared to the ones we’ve had. So it wasn’t hard for Abdul to get up to speed.
Q: Who stands out in the weight room?
Losey: The one who jumps off the top obviously is Nick Singleton. The dude is a model for all of our guys who come through the program and the way it’s supposed to look, especially in the way we train in the weight room. … We can throw pretty much any type of training protocol at him and he works his butt off at it and he adapts.
Q: How does Singleton adapt?
Losey: He’s gotten faster and, obviously at the position of running back, speed and agility are two of the biggest characteristics you need. But he’s also doing it at 226 pounds now as opposed to when he first got here at 208. That’s an easy statistic to point at, but that’s also hard to do. From a development standpoint, it’s hard to put on that type of lean mass and improve your movement qualities. That’s an area he got a lot better with.
Q: Who has stood out among the [freshmen] enrollees?
Losey: We've got two guys that just got here a couple of weeks ago in [linebacker Anthony] Speca and [receiver Peter] Gonzalez, and I'm really impressed with their foundation coming out of high school. They've jumped right into it and they're ready to go. If you would watch one of our sessions right now, you wouldn't know that those kids have only been on campus for a couple of weeks. So I'm really impressed with them.
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AllPennState is the place for Penn State news, opinion and perspective on the SI.com network. Publisher Mark Wogenrich has covered Penn State for more than 20 years, tracking three coaching staffs, three Big Ten titles and a catalog of great stories. Follow him on Twitter @MarkWogenrich.
MARK WOGENRICH
Mark Wogenrich is Editor and Publisher of AllPennState, the site for Penn State news on SI's FanNation Network. He has covered Penn State sports for more than two decades across three coaching staffs and three Rose Bowls.
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