Feb. 13, 2009
The Hatton File
Who: Troy Hatton
What: Football strength & conditioning coach
Age: 34
College: University of Illinois
By Richard Stevens — Senior Writer/GoLobos.com
The price for Troy Hatton to become a Lobo was a tough price to pay. It took some soul-searching. It took a talk with his father, who long ago had to make a similar decision concerning the needs of a family.
What Hatton had to do to become the strength and conditioning coach at UNM was move away from his 3-year-old son, Caden, who is back in Illinois with Hatton’s ex-wife. “Coach knows that was the major concern for me,” said Hatton, who came from the University of Illinois to join first-year UNM head coach Mike Locksley as a Lobo.
“Coach knew it would take a lot to get me out here. I don’t get as much time with my son as I would like anyway and now I’m out here. I told coach I needed to be able to get back to see Caden and to bring him out here as much as possible. We had to work some things out.”
Still, in order to come to grips with the decision to move to Albuquerque, Hatton had to visit with his father, who also had to spend time away from his kids in order to better support their financial needs.
“When we were growing up, dad had to travel a lot and be away from his family in order to support us,” said Hatton. “We talked about it. This is a deal where my career could take off and I can better provide for Caden, start a college fund, do a lot of things I couldn’t do back at Illinois.”
Back at Illinois, Hatton was an assistant strength coach making an assistant’s salary. At UNM, Hatton is Locksley’s right-hand man in the weight room and brings to UNM a system and an attitude that Locksley felt was important in order to push Lobo football to a higher level.
“Troy knows the system we use and I’m comfortable with him,” said Locksley. “Backs shouldn’t lift like linemen and linemen shouldn’t lift like backs, and Troy gets that. He also has that wrestling mentality that I like. Wrestlers are tough, intense, but they also have that ‘fall-on-their-swords’ mentality. Since he is one of the coaches that the players are around so much, I wanted our players to be around that mentality.”
Hatton is all business in the weight room. He was that way as a wrestler at Illinois and the extra time he spent lifting and pushing the iron helped him develop another passion to go along with wrestling. “I have a passion for wrestling, but I have a passion for this, too,” said Hatton.
When Hatton graduated from Illinois in 1998, he coached high school wrestling for several years, but came back to Illinois iin 2002 when there was an opening on the strength and conditioning staff. He worked with Olympic sports for several years and the success he had in those arenas got the attention of the football staff. They asked — no, told — Hatton to come over to football.
“They liked some of the things I had done and they liked my intensity and football gets what it wants,” said Hatton. “I think my heart was more with wrestling at first, but working with athletes is pretty much the same regardless of the sport. I’m very happy doing this.”
In the UNM weight room, Hatton is a model of focus and concentration as he stands near the center of the room barking out orders to a group of UNM football players. “I really like some of the stuff he has us doing,” said Donovan Porterie, a UNM quarterback.
Said Hatton: “From what I hear, what we’re doing is a complete flip-flop for some of the guys. A lot of our drills and stations, these guys have never done. That’s nothing against the old system. It’s just that our system is different and variety is the spice of life. Coach Paulsen (Mark Paulsen, UNM’s director of strength and conditioning) has been nothing but supportive and has even said that it maybe it was time to change things around.”
Hatton said his background in wrestling probably helped him in connecting with coach Locksley and convincing Locksley that Hatton was an important part of putting the Locksley’s touch on New Mexico football.
“He liked the systems we had at Illinois and he wanted to bring it here,” said Hatton. “Coach Locks also has an affection toward wrestlers. He appreciates the intensity of the sport and I know he likes it when he sees a wrestling background in a kid he is recruiting. He knows my intensity and how I carry it into the weight room.
“We are very much alike in our views of what we expect out of our athletes and the intensity and work ethic that needs to be included in the weight program.”
Editor’s Note: Richard Stevens is a former Associate Sports Editor and sports columnist for The Albuquerque Tribune. You can reach him at rstevens50@comcast.net. Previous articles are available at The Richard Stevens Corner