Ok, so they don't actually take place at midnight, but pretty close to it. WSU players have been introduced to what Mike Leach calls Midnight Maneuvers. They're a fun adventure that none of us probably want to partake in. And they're necessary. In fact, there's a completely logical reason for them.
If you follow some of the WSU players on Twitter, you probably saw what they had to say about the midnight maneuvers on Sunday night. They're a grind -- a glass of cold water to the face to begin the winter conditioning drills. The players know how much they suck to go through, but can also see the value in them.
From Swing Your Sword, which Christian pointed out on Twitter.
A portion of teamwork is sacrifice. During the two-week conditioning circuit, I wanted them to sacrifice their evenings. We called it Midnight Maneuvers. We would actually start around 10 at night. The timing was perfect because that's roughly the time of day when we'd be playing a lot of fourth quarters. I've heard a lot of teams do their conditioning at dawn, but how many games are their players going to play before breakfast?
We'd have our guys do a bunch of stations, where they'd have to do everything from bear crawls, to dot drills for their footwork, to obstacle courses. Better still, we knew they weren't out with their buddies partying. Instead, they were with their team. They gave up their nights because it was a team endeavor. We were working together as a team -- it was a good message to send.
So that's the beginning of the winter conditioning. Good luck, boys. It'll all be worth it in the end.