Jeff Dillman aims to build stronger Gamecocks, be key cog in recruiting
When a recruit comes to South Carolina’s campus to meet the Gamecocks football staff, they won’t leave without some time with Jeff Dillman.
Strength coaches are most often energetic, and that doesn’t hurt on the front lines of recruiting. But it also reflects a simple reality: should these players go on to sign with Will Muschamp and the Gamecocks, they’ll be seeing a whole lot of Dillman.
“That’s something Coach Muschamp says when they get on campus is, you need to spend as much time with the strength coach as possible because you’re going to spend a lot of your time with them,” Dillman said.
The batch of players who came through in the weeks before signing day all spent a segment of their official visits with Dillman. Incoming running back Rico Dowdle picked up a few exercises to employ in his last semester of high school, but he also came away with a distinct impression.
“He’s got like a natural juice and he uplifted all day non-stop, up-tempo,” Dowdle said. “I know it’s going to be great just working with him.”
Coaches often invoke the strength coach as one of the most key hires, and that’s because they send the messages down. They might spend as much time with a player as a position coach when the offseason factors in, and the strength staff is often counted on to build toughness and enforce levels of accountability. The well-traveled Dillman didn’t seem shy about taking on the responsibility.
He made it clear quickly that this job is a homecoming of sorts for him. He’s excited for the chance to return to a head strength coach role, the atmosphere and fan support, but one other element helped it check all the boxes.
“Nobody knows my background,” Dillman said. “I was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, and I was raised in Rockingham, North Carolina. So family is close.”
His energy and passion came through when the new USC staff was introduced last month at a basketball game. While the other coaches waved, he deployed a fist pump so hard he went airborne for a moment.
As an energetic presence, he admitted building a staff was a bit like assembling a puzzle. As a vocal coach in the weight room, he needed to surround himself with people who complemented, rather than replicated, his approach. It meant finding assistants who were more cerebral and intense, plus several former players who could fill a mentor role.
The group includes Dave Feeley, who ran the strength program at Ball State, plus ex-Gamecock Cedric Williams, among others.
The five-man staff and a group of interns work with about 25 players at a time, meaning the team is broken into four groups. They employ Olympic lifts with an emphasis on reaching goals quickly and maintaining player health.
Dillman’s coaching history boasts some interesting diversity. Sure, he was Muschamp’s head strength coach at Florida and spent last year working for Alabama’s well-respected strength coach Scott Cochran. But notably, he also worked at IMG Performance Institute in Bradenton, Fla.
There he worked alongside elite speed coach Loren Seagrave and refined his skills on a high level. He also had the chance to train beyond football.
“The other thing I got to do is I had the opportunity to work with a lot of elite athletes in different sports from football to basketball to baseball to tennis, track and field,” Dillman said. “And then also got to work with some young kids like elite, 8-year-old tennis players from Japan. That’s only one of many stories I had the opportunity to get exposed to there. It really helped me refine and develop my skill as a coach and how to motivate athletes, what to look for when trying to make them better, make them a more efficient athlete.”
This story was originally published February 16, 2016 at 11:56 AM with the headline "Jeff Dillman aims to build stronger Gamecocks, be key cog in recruiting."