Casey McNulty is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Westwood High School for AZPreps365.com

When people think of Arizona, they probably think of the Grand Canyon. But in the Phoenix area, some high schools are carving out a different kind of landmark: new weight rooms.

Within the past two years, four Arizona high schools have invested in new weight rooms for their student-athletes. Basha, Dobson, Mesa and Westwood High School traded their semi-functional, outdated facilities for new, state-of-the-art installations courtesy of Samson Equipment.

With the latest lifting technology, these high schools are building up their athletic programs for the future. But to understand how these schools renovated their weight rooms to provide for their student-athletes, we have to go back to 1976 when Samson Equipment was created.

In that year, Dave and Linda Schroeder, the company's founders, noticed that no weight room businesses provided both long-lasting and affordable equipment to coaches looking for upgrades.

To fulfill this need, the Schroeders created Samson Equipment out of their garage. Their limited start-up only made them more determined to create a client-focused equipment company.

"My dad started this company out of nothing...He's that guy," the son of Dave and Linda and Director of Sales at Samson Equipment, Scott Schroeder, said.

However, the family had an extra tool in their toolbox that would help them in the weight equipment business. The Schroeders knew exactly how to cater to the high school and college market because coaching ran in their blood.

“We've all coached at the collegiate level,” Schroeder said. “We played at the collegiate level. So we work selling to the guys we used to be.”

With a clear understanding of the athletic landscape, the Schroeders used their knowledge to make obtaining weight equipment from their company as easy as possible.

They created a flow chart that is the foundation and blueprint for every project the company takes on. It consists of five stages: discovery, layout design, project proposal, confirmation and execution.

Samson Equipment begins its projects by discovering what improvements its client wants to make to their existing weight room. The company then proposes 3D renderings of potential weight rooms to show how the new equipment will fit inside the client's space. After that, it tries to finalize a decision within the client’s budget.

The last and easiest step is installing the weight room. Schroeder explained that the most strenuous stages occur at the beginning of the process when the company has to figure out the best way to give its clients what they want.

“So in the first couple steps, [the company is] really doing a lot of the legwork in layout design with the coach or the client, with our products that match their program and how they want that to work,” Schroeder said. “We have a lot of options.”

Since day one, Samson Equipment has operated like a well-oiled machine, aiming to provide high-quality weight equipment to coaches and help student-athletes excel in their respective sports.

“At the core of [the company], we look at this as helping student-athletes, helping coaching, helping these programs get to where they want to go,” Schroeder said. “We take a lot of pride in it. We take a lot of personal attention for it.”

Although it has been about two years since the four Arizona high schools renovated their weight rooms, they are already seeing the positive effects of the new equipment on their athletic programs.

Eric Magaña, the Athletic Director at Basha, has witnessed a resurgence in sports participation at his school since making the upgrades. More student-athletes are training in Basha's new weight room, improving the school’s athletic teams.

“[Basha was] always kind of like the stepchild the CUSD always had, like the Hamiltons and Chandlers and the Perrys, they were beating us all the time in football and things like that,” Magaña said. “But now we've kind of just turned the tide, and we're winning in football, and we're winning in other sports that we probably shouldn't win at.”

Westwood Athletic Director Brady Pond has not only seen his school’s athletic performance improve, but he has also noticed that more students are drawn toward the Mesa Public Schools District because it prioritizes its student-athletes.

“I think we're doing a good job of catching up with a lot of programs… But I think the district as a whole has done a really good job of making sure that we are all elevating our game, and we're trying to get more kids to come to Mesa and stay in Mesa Public Schools.”

While it's easy to see the upgrades in the schools' new weight rooms, one of the added values is how these facilities are preparing high school athletes for the demands of collegiate training.

Navi Brinkerhoff is a senior on the Westwood softball team and is committed to playing softball in college at Minot State University. She believes the school’s new weight room has conditioned her for the training she will experience at the next level.

“[The weight room] is closer to what we'd expect in college, just nicer, more equipment, heavier weights,” Brinkerhoff said. “It makes things more efficient because everything is so tidy.” 

Magaña has already heard positive feedback from Basha alumni competing in college sports. The Basha alumni said the new weight room helped them adjust to collegiate lifting quickly because they were already used to that structure in high school.

“We ask [the student-athletes] ‘What's it like lifting at Oregon?’ or ‘What's it like lifting at Oklahoma?’ or ‘What's it like lifting at Wisconsin?’ [The alumni] go, ‘Oh, we're doing the exact same things we were doing [at Basha],’” Magaña said. “They're already starting with the head start once they get to college because they don't have to go on the developmental weightlifting programs.”

New equipment can only take student-athletes so far. What really makes the difference is having strength and conditioning coaches in place. At Westwood, strength coach and head softball coach Alyssa Dale played a key role in designing the school's new weight room. She had a clear vision: create a space that could handle more students and make training more efficient.

“Obviously, we wanted space for as many student-athletes to be working at one time as possible,” Dale said. “So we were looking at designs involving how many racks we could functionally put in the space while still leaving space for other more functional movements.”

Impactful strength and conditioning coaches, like Dale, paired with state-of-the-art equipment, are helping Westwood student-athletes achieve results in their sport and become stronger overall.

Westwood softball senior Hope Hutchins has trained in the school’s old and new weight room. She has seen a difference in her and her teammates' strength due to more advanced training with the latest equipment.

“We're a strong hitting team, we're not just getting the dinky hits, like people can hit the ball,” Hutchins said. “It definitely has built up over time from the weight room.”

However, these upgraded facilities go beyond physical change, as they are helping student-athletes learn how to challenge themselves like never before.

Especially at Westwood, Dale trains her student-athletes with the belief that a strong mind leads to a strong body. Constantly striving for success and improvement is what truly matters when they step on the rubber and pick up the dumbbells. 

“I think we're starting to see, and we'll continue to see, some more intrinsic motivation from these students because it's really easy to watch yourself get stronger,” Dale said. “So just keep pushing that, and keep pushing them to their limits and helping them understand what hard work feels like and feel that high that comes from self-improvement, and then continue to push themselves for more.”