University of Wyoming Athletics

LARAMIE – The iconic Nirvana riff begins echoing through War Memorial Stadium just after 6:20 a.m.

Our little group has always been

And always will until the end …

The Cowboys are about to cap off their fifth week of summer workouts on Jonah Field and later inside the weight room in the opulent High Altitude Performance Center.

Eric Donoval, the director of sports performance for Wyoming football, is on the field soaking up the cloudless, sun splashed, 55-degree morning and every ear-piercing cord of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

The Pokes gather excitedly around Donoval at 6:30 a.m. last Friday in a huddle of nervous anticipation.

“Once again the conditioning gods have blessed us,” Donoval says.

Today’s message is about willpower, which Donoval defines as having the mental and physical fortitude and wisdom to push through any adversity or obstacle.

“Willpower allows us to stand tall when other (expletives) are going to fold,” Donoval continues. “We’re not going to break; we’re going to do the breaking.”

The players begin the session with stretching and core-building exercises as the construction crew grinds away on the “Restore the War” project, bopping their heads on the west side of the stadium to a playlist that morphs into a mixture of hip-hop and thrash metal.

The morning team session – which does not include the freshmen who recently arrived on campus and are being eased into this level during their own workouts – consists of series 20 interval shuttle runs that will add up to 840 yards worth of sprints for each player.

The workout is designed to simulate the acceleration, deceleration and accumulative physical components of a 24-period practice.

A camera records every step. Each group is graded out to make sure every player is touching all the lines with their cleats and making the turns facing the correct side of the stadium.

For UW to win the day, everyone will have to execute the workout to perfection.

“Love the mindset, love the resiliency of our team this morning,” Donoval will say later. “Twenty reps, 100 guys on the team, you’ve got to go 2,000 for 2,000 to get the win. So, I’m really proud of the work they’ve put in and love where we’re at physically.”

The Cowboys improved to 2-3 on leaving the field with perfect Friday scores as a team. The attention to detail Donoval and the strength staff are demanding extends to using correct technique in the weight room later in the day and even making sure the locker room is pristine before leaving the building.

“We pride ourselves on developing a certain approach to things and a mindset,” Donoval said. “First you demand it, now it’s the standard.”

Hello, hello, hello, how low …

While veteran members of the squad were running last Friday, an image from last year’s devastating loss at Falcon Stadium, including the final score – Air Force 34, Wyoming 27 – hovers above on the scoreboard.

“That specific game came down to three or four plays,” Donoval says. “Most games are going to have three or four plays that can change the trajectory of the final score – one guy out of position or doing something wrong can change those specific plays.

"Part of the reason for the music is making sure these guys are communicating through it. We all know how we did on the road last year – we’ve got to manufacture our own energy and our own environment.”

UW finished 9-4 overall, the most wins in a season since 1996, but the road losses at Air Force, Boise State and UNLV knocked the Pokes out of contention for the Mountain West championship.

First-year head coach Jay Sawvel doesn’t want this team to publicly mention the word “championship,” but the mission is understood, and it begins with accountability under Donoval’s watchful eye when no one outside the program is looking.

“We spend the most time with them,” Donoval said of the strength staff, which also includes assistants Chad Traver, Conner Cain, Zach Sherard and Bo Babich. “What I love about it is I don’t dictate playing time, I don’t call plays, I don’t care if you’re a walk-on, I don’t care if you’re a scholarship player, I don’t care if you’re a freshman, I don’t care if you’re a senior. You are all on a level playing field in the weight room.

“Everybody is valued the same, everybody is going to get the same coaching. It doesn’t matter. All we’re about is progress and development – improving and being better than we were yesterday.”

Only a few short weeks after the Craig Bohl era closed with the dramatic 16-15 win over Toledo in the Arizona Bowl, the returning players were back in the facility to begin the winter strength and conditioning program.

“Winter is about rebuilding, weight gain, strength and power, and re-establishing and raising standards” Donoval said.

The 15 spring practices began on March 25 and concluded April 26. After a three-week break, the summer workouts began on May 20.

“The speeds on the bar and the way the weights were moving, I feel like we’re in a really good spot going into week six,” Donoval said. “We’re about halfway through summer so we better be.”

Following last Friday’s shuttle runs, the Cowboys did seven-on-seven and drill work with the coaching staff.

Then Donoval and his staff put the entire team through a weightlifting session spread out over three different groups of players in the HAPC’s 26,000 square foot strength and conditioning center.

The to-do list for the day includes back squats, back lunges, barbell hips extensions, weighted glute hamstring raises, Copenhagen planks, kneeling Pallof presses, latissimus dorsi tree holds and over/under hurdle stretches.

Tablets track the speed of the reps, which gives the strength staff a real-time assessment of how much weight each player should be pushing. The data from the workouts goes into a cloud that allows Donoval to track players’ progress from their true freshman season to the end of their careers.

There are also astonishing before and after photographs for each player in the database.

Two extremely fit senior wide receivers, Alex Brown and Will Pelissier, who were both healthy at the same this offseason for the first time in their careers, reached 22 mph while running 30-yard sprints.

All-Mountain West defensive tackle Jordan Bertagnole, who weighed 230 pounds as a true freshman and 253 pounds when he was thrown into the lineup in 2020, is setting the tone for teammates as a chiseled super senior during workouts at 293 pounds.

“Just a model of consistent work ethic, leadership and perseverance,” Donoval says of Bertagnole, a new father who is using his extra year of eligibility to lead the Cowboys defense and improve his NFL draft stock after playing through a shoulder injury in 2023 that required surgery.

Some other players Donoval plans to nominate for Bruce Feldman’s 2024 “Freaks List” in the Athletic are nimble 6-foot-2, 324-pound senior center Nofoafia Tulafono, explosive 6-5, 245-pound junior tight end John Michael Gyllenborg and “Ivan Drago” look-alike 6-5, 245-pound junior quarterback Evan Svoboda.

“It’s a strong body of work,” Donoval says of the physical state of the Cowboys. “That started in January. The body of work they put in during winter, in spring ball and then the way they came off a three-week intersession break was strong. My goal is for us to continue to raise the baseline levels of where we’re at each training cycle”

I found it hard, it’s hard to find …

After the two veteran workouts had concluded last Friday, the 2024 recruiting class entered the weight room at 2:30 p.m. for their final session of the week.

“Ya’ll ready?” a smiling Donoval said. “Let’s bust this workout!”

Donoval makes sure to remind the newbies that he doesn’t care how much weight is on the bar if they are using proper technique and giving maximum effort.

“We’re going to crawl before we walk,” Donoval says.

The freshmen started their acclimation to 7,220 feet with two sets of shuttle runs instead of 20.

The weightlifting circuit includes hang cleans, back squats and various styles of barbell presses. There are understandably less plates on the bars and more mistakes being made by the rookies than during the first two sessions with the returning players.

“You get one opportunity to lay a foundation,” said Donoval, who was an assistant strength coach in the SEC at LSU before coming to UW in 2018 and ascending to the director position in 2020. “With the freshmen it’s about laying down a strong foundation of the how – our standards and how we work, our expectations and the technique in the weight room, the technique on the field. It’s a slow build in terms of physical conditioning and all that kind of stuff.

“The altitude is real up here, just like heat and humidity was real for me in Baton Rouge. That’s something we’ve got to take into account. They’ve done a really good job with that, it’s a really good group.”

The goal will be to make sure the freshmen are ready to survive their first fall camp when they take the field with the seasoned players at the end of July.

The $44 million HAPC – which also features an academic center, dining hall, fueling station with healthy snacks, recovery pool, biomechanics lab, altitude simulation chambers, film rooms, a theater-sized team meeting room and even a barbershop – is home for the Cowboys.

“I continue to say how appreciative we are of the University of Wyoming, (director of athletics) Tom Burman, (deputy director of athletics) Matt Whisenant, Coach Sawvel and everybody that contributes to our athletic department to afford us these resources,” Donoval said. “We have such a strong appreciation for what they allow us to have to run the program we want to run. We’ve got to have the room to do it, we’ve got to have the staffing to do it, the technology to do it, and we have everything we need here.”

Nobody spends more time in the HAPC or with the players than Donoval, especially from January through August. He was entering his 13th hour on the clock following the final workout Friday before working at the UW football camp that evening.

“It makes it easy being around our guys,” Donoval said. “I’ve been in FBS for 15 years and I haven’t worked a day in 15 years because you get to be around these guys and watch them grow and watch them progress. It’s incredible.

“Don’t get it twisted, the players put in the work. It’s all their work. To see them grow, to see them at their worst, to see them at their best, and then to see all the hard work that nobody else sees … there’s nothing easy about this. To see it validated in front of millions either on TV or the stands, that’s really rewarding to watch what they do.

Here we are now, entertain us …

The Cowboys’ opener on Aug. 31 at Arizona State is fast approaching. Donoval will do everything in his power to make sure eight months of work behind the scenes pays off when his group faces the desert heat and the Sun Devils to kick off a season of great internal expectations.

“That’s why there needs to be such a sense of urgency with every rep we are allotted because we will be in Tempe before they know it,” Donoval said. “Our guys have embraced that, they’ve understood the value and urgency that we have to work, we’ve got to get better. They’ve done that for five weeks straight now.”

If you are interested in learning more about NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) or would like to support our student-athletes, please visit 1wyo.org. 1WYO was created out of Wyoming’s culture of neighbor helping neighbor. The mission is to promote and strengthen local charitable organizations and develop Wyoming student athletes. 

Follow Ryan for more stories on Wyoming athletics on X at @By_RyanThorburn on Facebook at Wyoming Athletics and Instagram at wyoathletics. Also follow him at Pokes Insider at Gowyo.com/pokesinsider.