Balancing act

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By Eric Page | Thursday, October 19, 2006 12:47 AM CDT | () comments

Big fun = 2,884 pounds 2006 Volkswagen New Beetle weight Big guns = 2,488 pounds From left, Davenport North’s Ryan Gustavis, Central’s Evan Muench, UT’s Matt Wendt, Muscatine’s Evan Tecklenburg, West’s Tyler Hill, UT’s Dan Clark, Bettendorf’s Steve Flynn and Central’s Shevez Lomas combined weight. Photo illustration by John Schultz /QUAD-CITY TIMES

EVAN Tecklenburg wasn’t always big. He weighed 7 pounds at birth and was tall and skinny as a toddler.

But the Muscatine senior offensive lineman now dwarfs even the largest of his peers.

At 6-foot-8, 335 pounds, he stands out in a room full of 300-pound high school football players.

“Everywhere I go I get a lot of stares,” Tecklenburg said. “People just look at me like, ‘Holy crap.’ I get a lot of open-mouth stares. You get used to that after a while. When I walk with friends who haven’t walked with me much, they’re like, ‘Why’s everyone staring at you?’ I’m like, ‘Just look at me.’ ”

A two-year starter on the Muskies’ offensive and defensive lines, Tecklenburg is just starting to feel comfortable with his massive frame.

He came into high school a 6-0, 275-pound freshman, lacking the coordination and athletic ability he needed to be effective in football. An 8-inch growth spurt has helped distribute the weight and make plenty of room for more — he went past 300 pounds at the end of his sophomore year.

“He is distributed a lot better now than he was in the past,” Muscatine coach Brian Sauser said. “He used to be just a big, heavy kid. Now he’s strong in the weight room, and his flexibility has gotten better. He’s in great shape, and he can move around. He has just kind of developed as an athlete over the past four years.”

Tecklenburg, who is expected to start on the varsity basketball team this season, has allowed only two sacks in two seasons of varsity football. And his presence on the defensive line is impossible to ignore. Still, he has flown under the radar of many major college programs. He has visited Iowa State and Northern Iowa but has no scholarship offers on the table.

“When you have a kid the

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size of Evan, everybody, including us coaches, expects him to go out and just flat out dominate the kid he’s playing against every night,” Sauser said. “The expectations are so much greater. Sometimes we think, ‘God, he should be doing more.’ But when you look at his performance, he is an outstanding player.”

While outweighing his counterparts by more than 100 pounds makes the game more fun at times — “You get a chance to go out and dominate,” Tecklenburg said — the weight advantage becomes a significant disadvantage at others. The foot speed of a 180- or 200-pound defensive end usually is much greater than that of a 335-pound offensive tackle.

“It’s difficult to match up because the smaller guys are so much quicker,” Tecklenburg said. “They have a real advantage in the fact that they’re so much shorter than me. If I can stay low, I have no problem. But sometimes at the end of the game when I’m real tired, I start to stand up. And that’s when I get beat.”

A growing trend

Tecklenburg isn’t alone in the high school ranks. He is one of 23 area high school players weighing 300 pounds or more.

“The trend is kids are getting bigger and bigger,” Sauser said. “You don’t even really think about it anymore when a kid is 300 pounds in high school. You just think, ‘Wow. That’s a good-sized kid.’ Even five years ago, a 300-pound kid was kind of a rarity, but now it’s like, ‘Oh well.’

“I think kids are just naturally getting bigger. But weight programs and overall nutrition habits have changed to where it’s normal for us to have linemen weighting 250 or 260 pounds. It’s to the point where it’s almost routine.”

Twenty years ago, 300-pounders were almost unheard of at any level of football. Former Chicago Bears star William “The Refrigerator” Perry was a notable exception, topping out at 370 pounds during his NFL career. But tune into any ESPN Classic broadcast of a college football game from the mid-1980s, and the first thing you’ll notice is the weights of the offensive linemen hovering right around 250 pounds.

Part of it is human evolution — the average person is much taller and heavier today than they were 100 years ago. Part of it is technology — knowledge of weight training and dietary supplements has trickled down from the professional to the college and now even the high school level.

“The game has definitely changed,” said longtime Bettendorf coach Randy Scott, who coaches 6-5, 316-pound Steve Flynn. “Just the mammoth size of the linemen. You take a look at the college linemen and professional linemen — they’re all 300-pounders.”

More than 500 players on NFL training camp rosters this summer topped 300 pounds. And 85 percent (136 of 160) of the league’s starting linemen last weekend weighed more than 300 pounds. And major college football is headed in the same direction.

Yet, Scott doesn’t see high school players striving to reach the 300 mark. In fact, he noted, his line usually averages 225 to 240 pounds.

“I think at the high school level it still is hard to imagine that you could have five 300-pound kids across your offensive line,” Scott said.

But Davenport Central’s Shevez Lomas is one that made a conscious effort to break 300.

He weighed 280 as a sophomore last season and “ate a lot more and didn’t run as much” in the offseason to try to put on 20 pounds. He went a little overboard.

“I got on the scale and it said 320,” Lomas said. “The conditioning this year was very tough.”

The 6-3 Lomas since has shed 17 pounds and weighs 303.

Cause for concern

Scripps Howard News Service released a study last winter that indicated NFL offensive and defensive linemen — many of whom weigh more than 300 pounds — have a 52 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than the general population. The study also compared the number of former NFL players who have died in the past century to the number of deceased Major League Baseball players from the same span. Professional football players were more than twice as likely to die before the age of 50.

In recent years, the NFL has seen massive offensive lineman Thomas Herrion of San Francisco 49ers die from heart complications. And Hall of Fame defensive lineman Reggie White died of cardiac arrhythmia late in 2004. He was only 43.

Fear is not lost on the 300-pound high school players, many of whom technically are categorized as obese.

“I’ve often worried about the health issues,” Tecklenburg said. “I do work out outside of football but not as much as I should. After I’m done playing, it’ll be a struggle. I’d like to keep myself at this weight, if not a little smaller. I just don’t want to be one of those guys you see who can’t even walk around. I don’t want to see myself become that.”

Davenport Central senior Evan Muench, who checks in a 6-3, 300, said he wants to play college football but doesn’t expect to go through life as a 300-pounder.

“Once I am all done playing, I would like to get the weight down,” Muench said. “I know there are health issues as far as being this big. Getting bigger is not something I want to do. As a normal, non-athlete, I’d like to weigh around 250 or 260. It would take a lot of hard work to get there, but I think I could do it and feel comfortable at that weight.”

Eric Page can be contacted at (563) 383-2277 or epage@qctimes.com.