old article but worth reading again
Homemade: Inside the garage gym West Virginia signee Zach Frazier created to go after his goals
By G. Allan Taylor
Dec 23, 2019
6
FAIRMONT, W.Va. — As a frigid December night crept past 8 p.m., Zach Frazier exited the family kitchen and shuffled across the driveway. The husky 6-foot-3, 295-pounder, dressed in a gray hoodie and workout shorts, unlocked a side door to the two-car garage.
Flipping on the light switch, he revealed what’s no longer a garage at all.
Inside sits a squat rack. Weight bench. Power clean platform. Lat tower. Glute/hamstring machine. And in the far corner hangs an Everlast punching bag. This is the home gym Frazier began assembling as a seventh-grader, his personal training chamber compiled across birthdays and Christmases and whenever word leaked out that someone in the neighborhood was tossing out equipment.
He didn’t crave video games, headphones or the typical gifts that teenagers consume. Instead, recalled his dad, Raymond, “He wanted things to make him better.”
As the highest-rated center prospect to sign with West Virginia’s football program since 2012 — he’s rated No. 12 nationally at the position, according to the 247Sports Composite — Frazier’s big-bodied frame was years in the making. Self-making.
The boy’s scheme for transforming the unused garage into a weight room featured more research than most middle-school sales pitches. Frazier itemized what the family was doling out in gym memberships and even broke down the cost of mileage and time traveling back and forth.
“He’s a thinker,” Raymond said, “so he started telling us how it would be cost-effective.”
The squat rack that paid for itself in a few months remains Frazier’s baby. So much so that Raymond found himself in hot water recently when his son switched on the lights and noticed something amiss: A couple of weight plates left on the bar.
“I’m sorry — I didn’t leave it like this. It kinda bugs me,” Frazier said, promptly re-racking the plates onto their proper side pin. Amid an otherwise neat room, order had been restored.
Apprised of the mishap, Dad admitted, “Yeah, that was probably my doing.”
Frazier’s mom Heather laughed. “Oh, noooo! He lets his dad have it when that happens.”
Then she explained what the family has witnessed ever since the first set of weights appeared in the garage: “That place, it’s his. And he takes pride in it.”
From emerging as a Power 5 football recruit to becoming the state’s most decorated high school wrestlers, her son believed in his future and seized it.
That’s been his assertion ever since the first day of kindergarten, when he returned home with news for his parents.
“I’m gonna win the Principal’s Award.”
“OK,” Mom asked, “so what is that?
When Frazier revealed it was an award given to fourth-graders who had straight A’s throughout elementary school, Heather was left breathless — and a little worried — about her son setting such a faraway goal that required perfection.
Four years later, the kid won the Principal’s Award. And now, a semester away from graduating high school, he owns a 4.5 GPA and turned down a scholarship offer from Stanford.
“He’s always been goal-driven,” Heather said.
Added Raymond: “We never had to say, ‘Go do your homework.’”
Frazier signed with West Virginia last week but won’t be enrolling early. Before becoming a college football player, his immediate mission is becoming the first four-time heavyweight wrestling champ in state history.
His career record stands at 126-2 and the current win streak exceeds 100 matches. Both losses occurred early in his freshman year, and in one of them, Frazier led by eight points only to be disqualified for an illegal move.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said. “But the other guy’s shoulder was injured and he couldn’t go on.”
This season he’s off to a 6-0 start on the mat, though Frazier is making the yearly transition from football that requires an uptick in conditioning. More running. More jump roping. More working the heavy bag.
Making sure the kid was built for the grueling sessions, his grandfather, Don Courtney, used to pick up Frazier after football and wrestling practice and put him through another workout.
“I think his goal was just to make me really tired,” said Frazier. “But I was with my Papaw, so it was always fun to me.”
Heather recalls her son listening intently when Courtney would ask: “What are you doing today that no one else in the state is doing so that you’re on that podium at the end of the year?”
The men on her side of the family own quite the podium pedigree: Courtney won the 175-pound crown in 1970, while uncles Chris, Ryan and Jeff combined for five state titles between 1993 and 2002.
“He’s definitely got the genetics going for him,” joked Fairmont Senior High football coach Nick Bartic. “All the championship wrestlers in his family, they’re a bunch of bad dudes.”
But Frazier derives the football DNA from his dad.
Raymond played center on the Fairmont State College team that won a D-II conference title in 1996. The star tailback who set the single-season school rushing record that year was Mike Joseph, now the strength and conditioning coach at West Virginia.
“Yeah, I got to block for him,” Raymond recalled. “Mike was very intense, even back then. During the season you were all beat up, but two or three days a week he would go in at 5:30 in the morning and start lifting. Soon the rest of us linemen started joining him.”
Joseph’s role in making Zach Frazier a Mountaineer can’t be ignored, especially with Frazier intending to study exercise physiology in hopes of one day becoming a strength coach himself.
“Zach can’t find a better role model than Mike Joseph for that,” Raymond said.
West Virginia’s cutting-edge recovery resources also caught Frazier’s attention. Such a collection of apparatuses — such as the cryosauna (where temperatures down to minus-180 degrees stimulate oxygenated blood flow), sensory-deprivation salt-water float tanks, GPS chips detailing live-action measurables, sleep-quality monitors, and NovoTHor laser therapy pods — is rare in the NFL, much less at college programs.
When Frazier decided to commit on Father’s Day weekend last June, he made it a surprise affair for the whole family. Cousins, uncles and aunts were in attendance, as was his lifelong pastor.
“We all ended up going to the team room and noticed that pretty much the whole coaching staff was there waiting,” Raymond said. “When Zach announced his commitment to us, it was a really nice Father’s Day gift. I told him he was covered for the next several years.”
Stanford envisioned Frazier playing defensive tackle, while Virginia Tech, Louisville and Wake Forest projected him at center.
West Virginia had mixed inclinations. After former defensive coordinator Tony Gibson profiled him playing noseguard, head coach Neal Brown’s new staff slotted Frazier on offense.
A two-way player who made 54 high school starts, Frazier told recruiters he didn’t have a preference.
Bartic saw enough aggression and athleticism for Frazier to play on either side. “When he does his box jump, he looks like a circus bear. He can really explode.”
Fairmont Senior went 48-6 with Frazier in the lineup, reaching three state finals and winning the 2018 championship. Before most of those games, he ate a chicken flatbread panini from Muriale’s, the local Italian restaurant.
The Fraziers had Muriale’s food on hand when quarterback signee Garrett Greene visited from Tallahassee, Fla., and watched Fairmont win its state quarterfinal game. They served it again when Brown and West Virginia offensive line coach Matt Moore came over for the in-home visit.
Muriale’s was a hit with the coaches, though they really savored what they saw in the muscle-making garage. All of Frazier’s strength work at home equated to benching 355 pounds, power cleaning 335 and squatting 560.
“I think he’s gonna be perhaps a dominant player for us,” Brown said last week after the national letter of intent arrived. “When I watched him live and I saw the pad level he played with and how he used his hands, it led me to believe that he may be able to contribute early.”
And playing only 20 minutes from home, he’ll be able to come back for the occasional chicken panini, which makes Heather happy.
She remembers her parents hosting suppers for the Fairmont State offensive linemen two decades ago when Raymond played. Those teammates became unofficial family members.
“Those guys still call my parents Mom and Dad, which is pretty cool,” she said. “If we could be a sort of home base for some of Zach’s teammates — the kids who are from Florida, New Jersey or Cleveland, who need a home-cooked meal — we would feel blessed to be those people.”
And that homemade gym, that mini-factory of sweat and strain, will be there as a testament to what Frazier built from within.
“No one outworks Zach Frazier,” said his mom, whose list of life quotes he framed and placed on a shelf inside the garage. It reads:
“Nothing is ever given, everything is earned.”
“Excuses are wasted air.”
“Get up early and stay late.”
“Never quit. Never stop.”
“Respect your coach.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Do the work.”
“Get good grades.”
“Refuse to fail.”
Instructions to live by, and Frazier is certainly taking heed.
