ISU OL Ethan Tuftee can dunk a basketball, hopes to stay healthy

By Rob Gray

Correspondent

 AMES - Iowa State offensive lineman Ethan Tuftee repeated as pound-for-pound strength champion in the team's summer workouts.

He commemorated the iron-based achievement by wearing a heavy metal tow chain.

Then the 6-4, 314-pounder added an interesting cross-training angle to his triumphant summer - by wearing a paper number amid a field of decidedly smaller athletes.

“I did go run the Bix (7),” said the Davenport native, who's battled an array of knee injuries but is healthy entering his senior season. “I was planning on walking it.”

But a family friend couldn't make it back for the popular July 27 road race.

Tuftee - a walking, er, running embodiment of the ongoing progress of the Cyclones' strength and conditioning program - served as the competitor's unlikely stand-in, and realized walking might not be an early option.

“The elite runners were just in front of me and I was in the runners group,” Tuftee said. “The run/walkers were behind me. So I kind of gutted it out to the top of Brady Street hill. I ran the first two miles and ran-walked the rest of it.”

Tuftee made it.

He's repeatedly come back from injuries.

He's proven to be unbeatable in the weight-training race.

And he's nearly indispensable when it comes to the Cyclones' hopes for success in 2013.

“Probably more important than I want to state,” ISU coach Paul Rhoads said. “We need Ethan Tuftee on the football field. We're going to have to protect him a little bit at times to do that and we already have.”

That meant backing off somewhat in the summer.

Just like in the winter and spring.

Yet Tuftee still topped his winning 2012 pound-for-pound points mark of 772.

He edged linebacker Jeremiah George and defensive back Matt Thomas for the 2013 crown on the last lift - mere days before the Bix.

It was tough,” said Tuftee, who also earned the power factor award this season, which is based on vertical jump relative to body weight. “A couple guys really competed for it and I think we went back and looked at some of the numbers that day or the day after and if I would have put up the numbers I did last year, three or four people would have beat me.”

So he gutted it out.

Blue-collar - new offensive line coach Chris Klenakis's favorite set of words.

Topping the strength chart again with his teammates' cheers serving as the soundtrack.

“It's awesome,” ISU quarterback Sam Richardson said of the personal growth gleaned from the Bergstrom Football Complex-enhanced summer program. “It's a fun way to put strength and conditioning together. You want to see it on a personal level, see your numbers go up. I think in every instance it always does. You always see progress.”

That happened in the old weight room, too, but the Bergstrom facility allows for team-wide training sessions, not strictly position group-based lifts.

And the Cyclones just concluded its first full winter-spring-summer training within it's just over one-year-old walls.

The results?

Record highs - for Tuftee and everyone else, on average.

Strength and Conditioning coach Yancy McKnight said the team improved by three guys over last year's then-record squat numbers.

Power clean?

Also up by three players.

Power index guys?

Went up from nine to 11.

“Those things, you know, they are what they are,” McKnight said.

The surge -first noted after the winter program - initially had McKnight scratching his head slightly.

How did the numbers go up after weight room stars such as Jake McDonough, A.J. Klein and Jake Knott graduated and youth populated the roster more than ever since Rhoads took over as coach in 2009?

“Those don't usually, generally correlate,” McKnight said.

One key difference?

“The room,” McKnight said. “It's helped because we've added more tools in our toolbox.”

Especially for Tuftee, who's vertical leap maxed out at 33 inches - a personal record.

He trained hard, but smart.

“(He) can dunk a basketball just jumping off two feet in place,” McKnight said.

He can also run a race that seems to symbolize his own growth and resilience.

“A lot of uphill,” Tuftee said. “And once you're nice and tired, you get to run back downhill.”