Marty Kirkland: Phillips has taken fitness to new level

Brandon Phillips has trouble remembering a time when fitness and athletics weren’t important to him, but somehow he keeps finding a way to both elevate the profile of exercise in his life and keep testing himself.

He was a three-sport athlete at Dalton High before graduating in 2001, playing football and baseball in addition to wrestling his way to an area championship and third-place finish at state as a 189-pounder as a senior.

After a two-year layoff, he eventually returned to wrestling at Kentucky’s University of the Cumberlands. Phillips found the jump in intensity from high school to college practices and matches jarring, but he adjusted well enough to earn a spot at NAIA Nationals in 2004. He later finished his college education at Kennesaw State University, majoring in exercise science.

These days, the 27-year-old Phillips is a physical education teacher at Marietta’s Walker School, where he’s also the strength and conditioning coach for wrestling and football, as well as the head coach for middle school football and the head coach for varsity wrestling.

And for fun? Well, when I caught up to him for a phone interview this week, Phillips was doing some shopping for construction material to be used in the home gym he’s building. That space will no doubt be used to further his devotion to CrossFit, an exercise program he discovered in early 2009 while reading about the training regimen used by actors in the movie “300.”

Trying to define CrossFit in layman’s terms seems to be a bit of an exercise in itself, but Phillips gave it a go, explaining that it’s in some ways a response to the aesthetic-based weightlifting and cardio programs that dominate many gyms. It’s about varying the workout every time out and focusing on finding weaknesses in order to strengthen them. And it’s about constantly finding a new physical limit — something he already had some understanding of from his wrestling days.

“Training to pure exhaustion,” Phillips said, “is not something the average gym-goer would want to do.”

But it must have sounded like fun to Phillips, who within three months had qualified for the third edition of the CrossFit Games, an international competition that uses the principles of the exercise program as its foundation.

One of those is variation to the degree that participants in the games don’t know what specific events they’ll participate in until the day of competition, although they do know that skills in explosive weightlifting, gymnastics and running will help. (This year’s competition found Phillips doing everything from traditional power lifts to climbing ropes to moving sandbags.)

That seems to contrast with the specified preparation that goes into most team sports and many individual athletic pursuits, but it’s something Phillips has enjoyed.

“It’s not you going out there and competing against somebody else,” he said. “It’s you going against yourself. That’s what CrossFit allows you to do.”

But since they are keeping score, Phillips likes being among the best and he’s doing pretty good in that regard so far. He finished 30th at the CrossFit Games in 2009. That earned him an exemption through this year’s newly added sectional round, allowing him to go straight to the Southeast Regional in Jacksonville, Fla., where he was second on his way to the top-level event in Southern California. There, he finished 11th out of 45 competitors in the Men’s Individual competition.

Phillips has no trouble recognizing how he needs to improve or how a break or two might have led to him to a top-five finish. Regardless of his place, though, Phillips said the overall principle behind CrossFit remains true even for competition.

“Overall, it’s about proving fitness and not being weak in any areas,” he said.

And for Phillips, it’s about doing everything he can to help others reach similar goals. He’s already incorporated his new training philosophies into P.E. classes at Walker, even extending his teaching to the preschool kids with whom he sometimes works. Outside of his teaching duties, he recently helped a woman in her 60s use the training to improve her everyday fitness.

However, Phillips isn’t surprised to be living this kind of life. Even back at Dalton High, where he looked up to coaches like Bill McManus, Richard Garrett and Chad Jordan, he knew he wanted his career to be related to exercise. Where he eventually ended up and what he’s doing now he can only credit to holding onto “a love of fitness.”

He’s enjoying it as much as he ever has.

“Right now I’m finding this good balance between coaching and competing and educating,” Phillips said, “teaching others about fitness and having quality of life.”

• The most recent Georgia High School Association reclassification has Dalton and Northwest Whitfield in different regions for the first time in several years. Northwest’s all-Region 7-4A football schedule has the Bruins’ annual meeting with Dalton off the regular season slate for the first time in 13 seasons.

But those of you who were worried about missing an opportunity to talk a little trash with your blue-clad neighbors — or red-clad, depends on which side of the fence you’re standing — need not be troubled. The Bruins and Cats will meet in the preseason scrimmage for each at 7 p.m. on Aug. 12 at Harmon Field.

How much the final score matters will probably depend on whether or not your team had more points.

Either way, the crowd figures to be good for this matchup — even on a Thursday night, even for a scrimmage — and Hamilton Diagnostics Center is hoping you’ll turn up to support your team and a good cause.

Proceeds from that night’s game (admission is $5) will be used to help raise awareness of breast cancer and the event itself will be tailored to do the same. Cheerleaders from both teams will throw out pink footballs provided by HDC and North Georgia Radiology to honor the 60 women who have been diagnosed this year at HDC. Pink jerseys with the No. 60 will also be given away.

A few area high school sporting events have been used as breast cancer fundraisers in recent years, including Dalton-Northwest basketball, but this has the potential to pull in even more cash for the cause.

• Irvin Espinal and Luis Salazar were accustomed to winning Region 7-4A championships with Dalton High’s boys soccer team.

A few years later, they’re aiming to help Chattanooga Football Club claim a national title.

Espinal and Salazar scored the first two goals in Chattanooga FC’s 4-0 victory against Rocket City United of Huntsville, Ala., to close out an undefeated regular season earlier this month. Tonight, the former Cats and Chattanooga FC (6-0-2) will take on Wisconsin’s Madison 56ers (8-2-0) in the National Premier Soccer League championship semifinals in Madison, Ala.

Chattanooga, the NPSL Southeast Regional champ and the No. 2 seed for the semifinals, and Madison, the Midwest champ and No. 3 seed, will play an 8 p.m. Central time match at City School. The winner advances to Saturday night’s championship and will face either the Sacramento (Calif.) Gold or FC Sonic Lehigh Valley, based out of Allentown, Pa., the two participants for today’s 5:30 p.m. semifinal. The loser plays in Friday’s consolation championship.

Espinal and Salazar were reliable scorers for the Cats during the past decade — Salazar became the team’s all-time leader in career goals, while Espinal went on to break Salazar’s single-season goals record his final year — and have been able to fill similar roles for Chattanooga, a second-year club that has quickly made an impression in the 35-team NPSL.

As so often was the case when they played at Dalton, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see either play a big part if Chattanooga is able to claim the championship.

Marty Kirkland is Assistant Sports Editor of The Daily Citizen.

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