Virginia Tech football: Hokies hire Marc Lewis to full-time role on strength & conditioning staff

The Virginia Tech Hokies added to their staff on Wednesday when the school quietly announced it had hired Marc Lewis in a full-time position to assist with the football team’s strength and conditioning staff.

While this appears to be an under-the radar, nondescript hire, it is really much more than that.

Lewis, who earned his master’s of science from Virginia Tech, will lead the school’s sports science analytics program for the football team.

Lewis spent last year working with strength and conditioning coach, Ben Hilgart.

Many of the nation’s top programs already had coaches like Lewis already in place. When we tell you how far Virginia Tech is behind in some of its resources on the football side, this is an example.

Per Virginia Tech’s official website, here is a little more background on Lewis.

Lewis is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise at Tech. In the past year, he assisted Hilgart’s team in the development and implementation of a comprehensive strength and conditioning program aimed at reducing the likelihood and severity of sport-related injury, while enhancing on-field performance. He will manage Tech’s comprehensive athlete monitoring program using GPS tracking and heart rate monitor systems utilized by student-athletes during training and practice to collect and analyze data as he monitors training load and assesses performance indicators, working in conjunction with Mike Goforth and Tech’s medical and athletic training staffs. Lewis has also held a position as a sports science research assistant, human nutrition, foods and exercise at Virginia Tech for the past three years where he has assisted with athlete monitoring using GPS technology and heart rate monitors, collected subjective data on athlete readiness and sessional Ratings of Perceived Exertion (sRPE), and conducted gait analyses used in return-to-play protocols using data from the triaxial GPS.

Lewis isn’t going to help Virginia Tech on the recruiting trail. But he can help the coaching staff in many ways.

Let’s hope this is the first of several additions for the Hokies in the coming months.