St. Thomas Academy enters Friday’s Class 5A state tournament semifinal game against Alexandria as perhaps the healthiest football team in the state. Sure, the Cadets have bumps and bruises, but injuries won’t hold a single player on the roster out of competition.

Which, in mid-November, is remarkable.

“It is kind of a little miracle that we’re all as healthy as we are,” senior linebacker Cade Caruso said.

And there is certainly luck involved. Cadets assistant coach Chad Abbott noted there are certain plays that can happen on the football field that could cause injury, regardless of preparation or prevention methods.

But it is also possible that one contributing factor to St. Thomas Academy’s health — knock on wood — is the Cadets’ practice approach this season.

First-year head coach Travis Walch at one time served as special-teams coach at the University of St. Thomas. So he was accustomed to the college level’s three-day practice schedule. He was such a believer that he decided to bring it to the high school level.

A couple of players now refer to Monday’s “practice” as “Mental Mondays.” Every Monday, coaches work in the school on more film work and game planning for the upcoming opponent, while Walch and strength coach Steve Rosga are with the players.

Earlier in the season, Walch would pass the time on Mondays by trying to “gameify” football with various drills that worked on football skills. He would have cornerbacks and defensive backs practice basketball tip-offs to work on high-pointing the football.

For fun one day, he let the offensive linemen play speed-walk football, where senior lineman Robbie Wollan said players picked up on how to block in different ways downfield.

Since the playoffs began, the focus has shifted to body work. Players now often do yoga on Mondays before transitioning inside to meet with coaches.

Caruso said Walch sold the idea to players that the one day of lighter work a week would equate to roughly two to three games fewer of wear and tear on the body. And Walch wanted his coaches to be able to spend Sundays at home with their families.

“I think it compounds on itself,” assistant coach Luke Marks said. “There’s more than one way to do it and do it well. … I’ve been with those (staffs) that it’s a bit more traditional … but I would say this seems to work really well. I feel like our kids are really fresh.”

Wollan certainly is. He said it’s a “night and day” difference between how he feels now versus how he did at the end of last season after the Cadets lost in the state quarterfinal round.

“I feel like I could go play another eight weeks of football,” Wollan said. “And I could not say the same last year.”

So his feeling on the philosophy has shifted. Mondays now are a stark contrast to Mondays of past years. Previously, Cadets quarterback Maximus Sims said the first day of the week was “really hard.”

“We had a hard contact day — getting the blood juicing, getting the kinks out, just hitting each other and going back and forth,” Sims said.

And it worked. Frankly, everything under former coach Dan O’Brien worked. He led St. Thomas Academy to unprecedented success, and is off to a fast start in his rebuild of the Holy Family Catholic football program.

So when Walch came in and proposed a somewhat major change, people were skeptical.

“Especially us upperclassmen, we’ve been in a system in the past where you’re going full speed four days a week, and then you’re jumping right into a game,” Wollan said. “We kind of joked around with it at first, and then I think we all just realized once we were getting further into the season and our bodies were feeling it, ‘Alright, this is probably the best thing for us.’ It took us a couple weeks to adjust to it, but I feel like we adjusted well and understood the benefits.”

Another one of those benefits was a premium put on mental preparation. Because coaches were afforded even more time to review film and construct a game plan, they had more answers to questions at the time of presentation.

“Having time to devise a game plan, and then time to slowly walk through it to the kids, I think, is a good learning environment,” Abbott said.

That environment, players and coaches agreed, fostered productive practices from Tuesday to Thursday. Sims said having a firm grasp of an opponent’s tendencies on Monday helped Friday go smoothly.

“I’m beginning to understand how that extra day has had an effect on us out-scheming teams and just having a better understanding,” Kollan said. “Because you have three months of the summer to build up that physicality, but you only have a week to build up to another opponent.”

But the physicality is certainly important. The Cadets don’t tackle in practice. Walch said tackling is maybe one of the team’s chief concerns. Perhaps there is a correlation.

But St. Thomas Academy players swear by the conditioning of their practices. The lack of tackling elongates reps, as players simply fulfill their responsibilities via fits and gaps, and then as the play continues to progress, so does their pursuit.

Instead of a rep lasting two or three seconds, it could be seven.

“Less hitting, but more tempo,” Sims said. “We don’t really have hitting, but we run everywhere.”

So they’re in shape, and they’re fresh — both mentally and physically. The general belief seemed to be that any cons are heavily out-weighed by pros.

“It’s just more fun,” Sims said. “Being able to take it down a notch in that early week and ramp it up and ramp it up and getting ready for Friday so Friday feels nice and easy, so I think it helps a lot.”

Marks said the change has been “phenomenal.”

“I know for me, having our Mondays to do those game plans … you can stay a little bit more fresh as a coach and sane as a coach,” Mark said. “As a coordinator, I think it’s absolutely a winning edge for us.”

And it has played at some role in the Cadets getting back to the state semifinals for the first time since 2019.

“Once you give it that chance, I think everyone realizes it’s benefitted us,” Sims said, “and it’s why we’re in state right now.”

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