Monday, six a.m. You’re at the high school for morning conditioning. Eight a.m., you’re done. Three p.m., you’re back for practice. Five thirty, you’re done again. Exhausted, you barely make it home and into bed before you have get up Tuesday and do it again. Then Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. This is “Hell Week”- a week overloaded with sports practice and hell-ish conditioning, with the intention of making you stronger and finding the players who are truly dedicated to the sport.
San Luis Obispo High School football doesn’t have a single “Hell Week”, rather a “Hell Month” as junior Tate Indvik referred to the “whole month of double practices in August”.

“Coach Johnston does it to weed out the ‘t-shirt guys’. They’re guys who are just doing football for the shirt, for the swagger,” said Indvik. But is this tactic really effective in strengthening our football program? In my 3 years at SLOHS I cannot recall a single football team that went to CIF or was recognized for anything other than their “work ethic and effort”. In fact, the last time that a SLOHS football team won league was 2002, when most other sports have at least one league title since 2010.
“Hell Week” definitely makes players quit, but sometimes it’s players who need a summer job and can’t commit to a twenty hour football week. Often these players might be promising prospective football athletes that are ran out of the program with their tails between their legs because they can’t be all football, all the time.

While it’s true that there are some players who aren’t truly interested in pursuing the sport and should be cut, there are significantly more who are and many others who would be able to make a positive impact on the team if given the chance to put in the work and not forced to just put in the outrageous amount of time required by the program currently.