BY DANIEL SCHMIDT
THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — At Opelika High School’s indoor training facility, athletes of all shapes and sizes zip around the artificial turf floor.
Some are in black metal racks, squatting or bench pressing hundreds of pounds while others perform various jumps or sprints.
At the center of it all is Kade McGee, the Bulldogs’ first full-time strength and conditioning coach.
With an estimated 1,000-plus athletes moving through the building in a typical week, McGee has a hand in virtually every one of OHS’s teams.
“That’s the part of being a high school strength coach that I love,” McGee said. “I love having my hand on every sports program at our school and getting to work with all the athletes. I see the behind-the-scenes work that a lot of people in the community don’t see. They see the kids play, but I witness all the hard work and the day-to-day grind that goes on in the off-season and throughout the whole year.”
While he’s been on the job for two years now, the impact he’s had on Bulldog athletics is still relatively new.
Before McGee was hired in June 2024, the school had no full-time strength coach.
Head coaches and their assistants usually ran the weight room themselves, and the equipment was used mainly by the football, baseball and volleyball teams.
Today, McGee said, every Bulldog athlete trains in it, and the results have been evident.
OHS freshman softball shortstop McCall Clayton, who was recently named The Observer’s Softball Infielder of the Year, directly credited McGee for her improved performance.
As an eighth grader last year, she tallied seven home runs, 30 runs and 27 RBIs. This year as a freshman, those numbers ballooned to 15 home runs, 45 runs and 50 RBIs.
“He’s really worked with us in the season, and in the fall, I got so much stronger,” Clayton said. “Last year I wasn’t able to be in the weight room, and I just saw that change this year. It’s the weight room that has really powered me to do all this.”
Becoming a Bulldog
McGee heard about the opening from a friend and fellow high school strength coach who saw that Opelika was hiring.
He didn’t know anyone in town, but he had heard good things about the school and the community, and he reached out.
A conversation with former head football coach Bryan Moore led to an interview, and McGee said the visit sold him.
Talks with OHS Principal Kelli Fischer, Opelika City Schools Assistant Superintendent Pam Fourtenbary and others then left him certain.
“Once I came down here, interviewed and got more information about the job, I knew I wanted to come here,” McGee said.
However, the move was not without some initial growing pains.
McGee had spent the previous five years at American Christian Academy, a 4A private school in Tuscaloosa.
Trading it for a 7A public school with nearly 1,600 students meant months of learning names and systems.
“It was a little stressful at first, but I started to get the hang of it,” McGee said. “It was a fun challenge and something I was looking for in my career.”
When he first walked into the indoor facility for the first time, he liked the building, but the equipment was another matter.
Much of the gear was wearing out, and with every team now using the room, some of it had become a safety concern.
McGee began making the case to administrators, which eventually led to the gathering of quotes and renderings in the fall of 2024.
Safety drove much of the decision.
McGee said he considers the weight room the most dangerous classroom on campus, and he needed the proper tools to ensure his athletes went home uninjured.
The effort finally picked up momentum after Kevin Davis became superintendent in mid-2025, and timelines and plans began falling into place.
The school turned to Williams Strength, a South Carolina-based company McGee considers among the best in high school equipment.
The new setup includes 10 power racks, 10 built-in floor platforms for Olympic lifts and deadlifts, a full set of new dumbbells, five cable machines, five lat pulldown and low-row machines, six glute-ham developers and reverse hypers and 10 prowler sleds for resistance running.
“Any piece of weight equipment that I could ever want or need now to train athletes, I’m blessed to have it,” McGee said. “I believe we’re giving our kids the best high school training experience we can offer them.”
Another component of the new setup was a data-driven approach that allows McGee to track virtually everything.
The online system his program uses assesses athletes’ sprints, jumps, body weight and composition and more.
The clearest gains have come in raw strength, he said, but the changes he values most are subtler: athletes who move better and bodies that transform.
“Something I’ve tried doing is getting our head sport coaches bought into the vision of having their athletes in the weight room training year-round, because athletic development and training should never have off-seasons, right?” McGee said. “I want 100% participation across all sports because the more kids we have come through our program, the more students I can improve, and hopefully, the more we can help our teams be successful, give our community programs to be proud of and build a winning tradition.”
Humble beginnings
McGee’s path to becoming a strength and conditioning coach began at Bibb County High School, where he was never a star athlete, but one of the hardest workers in the weight room.
Self-described as one of the “odd kids on the team that loved working out,” McGee grew to love the grind of strength training.
Then, around his sophomore year at the University of Alabama, he discovered the exercise science major and later completed an internship at a performance training facility in Hoover before his junior year.
He was hooked.
“I just love coaching people,” he said. “The science behind making athletes better, bigger, faster, stronger and more durable, all of that stuff is just something I’ve always been drawn to.”
Now entering year three at his job with OHS, he has not yet watched a full class grow up in his program, which is the part of his job he says he loves most.
“At my last job, I was there for five years, and the most rewarding thing was seeing kids come in as eighth and ninth-graders and grow physically, emotionally and spiritually to become a complete person,” McGee said.
He intends to be around to see it happen.
“I have the best job in the state, even the country, as a high school strength coach here,” McGee said, “and I plan to stay as long as they let me keep working. I’m proud to be a Bulldog and excited for the future.”
