Gazette-Times reporter

Jay Locey should have been feeling great.

It was 2000 and Locey’s Linfield College football team was 4-0, with a win over defending national-champion Pacific Lutheran.

Yet it wasn’t fun for the coach or the players.

“A wide receiver, Sonte Wong, came into my office and said, ‘Coach, I know we ought to be feeling great, but I feel kind of empty right now.’

“I said, ‘To tell you the truth, I do too,’ ” Locey said. “We had been so task-oriented on stuff. We had been so successful, but it was like an emptiness, almost, even though we should be on the top of the world.”

Locey decided to try a few diversions to loosen up the team, bring the players together and make football fun again. The Wildcats went 9-0 in the regular season before losing in the playoffs.

The team-building events went so well that Locey kept them going every year. The Wildcats had swim Olympics and a sleepover in the fieldhouse during fall camp, and went with smaller ideas during the season.

They wound up winning the national title in 2004. When Locey left for his current job as an assistant coach at Oregon State after the 2005 season, he brought his team-building activities with him.

“We’ve carried that on here,” Locey said. “Mike has been great. He came up with the idea of a bowling night here at the MU and some of the staff guys did movie nights during the preseason, so those were all good things we did.

“The whole thing is trying to develop a closeness. I think these guys have got a good thing going in terms of closeness and tightness and wanted to play for each other and lay it on the line because they like each other and care about each other.

“The whole thing we’re trying to do is develop the motivation (that) I want to play for my brother.”

The activities caught on right away with the Beavers.

“We’d go to the movies, go swimming or we’d go do something in the indoor (center), run around and have little competitions between the classes,” OSU defensive lineman Curtis Coker said. “I think it helped build bonds. It kind of lightened the mood of fall camp.”

The players competed in a variety of events in swim Olympics, such as who could make the biggest splash.

“It was just fun,” OSU center Kyle DeVan said. “As long as you bought into what coach Locey was doing. Some of the guys in swim Olympics stood up in the bleachers because they didn’t want to do it, but a lot of the seniors like myself, I swam the whole time and I had a great time doing it. I think it brought us closer together as a team.”

There was a sumo wrestling competition in which players wore a tire tube and battled each other. Defensive lineman Brennan Olander took the title.

The Beavers brought in guest speakers such as Bill Curry and Steve Preece and had a daily quote from a former athlete or other influential person.

Most of the big events were held during fall camp to break up the monotony of all the practicing. The team had a barbecue where they grilled hamburgers, played Whiffle ball and tossed around the football.

“It makes fall camp go by faster because we’re doing fun things,” DeVan said. “Camp’s a long and tiring process and we go out there at the end of the day we do fun things.”

Reserve quarterback Ryan Gunderson has come up with several ideas, including the Gundy Awards and a Jeopardy game for the team.

Some of the questions were standard for Jeopardy, such as Oregon history. Others were a little more revealing.

“We just had some random questions and then kind of some stuff (like) some pictures of guys. You had to guess who the picture of each guys was and they were a little bit incriminating, not too bad, but some guys with their shirts off, flexing for the camera,” Gunderson said. “They didn’t think we’d get ahold of the picture.”

Gunderson said the activities are a good way for the players to get to know each other and do something other than football.

“It’s just getting guys to spend time together when they’re not out on the football field,” he said. “We get so locked in when we’re here and so focused that we actually forget that we’re friends and we really all get along. It’s just a chance for us to hang out and really have a good time together.”