☕️ S&C Daily — Creatine's Surprising Second Act

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After a Citadel game where his team "got pushed around," Chattanooga's assistant AD for athletic performance Gerry Pacitti posted the words on his office wall - and he still looks at them every day. "That's a direct reflection of me. I took it personal," he said. What followed was a full offseason overhaul, and the roster got noticeably bigger and stronger.

By the numbers:

Pacitti's bottom line: "If you just try to do right in this program, you're going to be successful."

In a new iScience study out of UCLA, creatine showed a surprising second act: helping fuel the immune system's cancer fight. Building on earlier work showing creatine powers killer T cells, the team found it also energizes dendritic cells, which direct those T cells to attack.

In mouse melanoma models, daily creatine slowed tumor growth and boosted dendritic-cell numbers and activation, and it enhanced human dendritic cells in a dish too. The researchers stress this was cells and mice, not patients - more research is still needed.

Aesthreadics has become a go-to source for custom team weightlifting belts, outfitting programs from Arizona State to Tennessee with school-branded gear. The USA-based shop builds each belt to order - treated cowhide, steel hardware, team name and colors - with a 2-3 week turnaround. Orders are tax exempt, custom work is included in the price, and per-belt cost drops as order size climbs. Reach out to Darren for more info

Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), a 10-year NFL vet, introduced the STRONG Act - a bill to classify strength and conditioning coaches as their own profession in the federal labor data. Right now the Bureau of Labor Statistics lumps them under broad buckets like "Exercise Trainers and Group Fitness Instructors" or "Coaches and Scouts," which distorts the numbers on wages, job growth, and workforce needs.

The act directs the OMB to consider a dedicated code - ideally under "Healthcare Practitioners" - at the next SOC revision, adds no new federal spending, and has backing from the NSCA, APTA, and NATA.

Lenoir-Rhyne has hired Jordon Simmons as its Director of Athletic Performance, also serving as head strength and speed coach for football.

A Lenoir-Rhyne alum and former long snapper, Simmons returns after stops at Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State, and Nevada under Jay Norvell, plus an early-career run at Oklahoma. His background runs deeper than most: before coaching, he served with the Army's 3rd Special Forces Group (THOR3), and his father, Jerry, spent 23 years as an NFL head strength coach.

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