Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 13 No. 6 | June 2021

inside.hokiesports.com 21 C o n t a c t a M a r t i n T r a v e l A d v i s o r T o d a y MartinTravel.com/Hokies | 540-343-5400 | Hokies@MartinTravel.com H O W C A N I B R I N G M Y Hokie, Hokie, Hokie, Hi! Chant A L L T H E W A Y I N T O Enemy Territory? MARTIN KNOWS Martin has all the official football away game packages. ©2020 AAA Club Alliance Inc. 20_717265b TR_IN_20_717265b_Martin Travel_Hokies Insert-7.5x4.8_DN3.indd 1 6/19/2020 9:52:32 AM a remarkable story. I’m extremely grateful to have someone who possesses his talent and character working with our young men on a daily basis.” The team had just gotten some new GPS training equipment, which allows detailed information about practice performance to be viewed and analyzed by coaches. Lewis focused his dissertation on this same topic—athlete monitoring in American collegiate football. Lewis implemented this monitoring with the football team, helping players reach their full athletic potential. Equipped with a GPS monitoring device and heart rate monitor, he’s able to download a set of 125 variables for each player after practice. As the assistant director of strength and conditioning and director of sports science, Lewis narrows those variables down to a handful of important ones that can be tracked daily. This not only helps the players reach their on-field potential, but also helps them safely return from an injury, prevent injuries, and helped with the return to play COVID-19 protocols in 2020. “We can use technology and make it a part of how we do things,” Lewis said. “We can take the data and use it intelligently while being tough on the field.” While he loves working in college athletics, he couldn’t work with another school’s football team after working with the Hokies. He turned down the head applied sport scientist position for the University of Texas football team. After earning his Ph.D. from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Lewis will become a tenure track professor at Valdosta State University in Georgia. “I’m getting my Ph.D. 45 minutes from where I was homeless and from where I was abandoned as a baby in a trailer,” Lewis said. “It’s surreal to be able to do this.”