☕️ S&C Daily — Go Hard, Recover, Go Again

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In a new piece from The Athletic, sports scientist Alan McCall breaks down why this tournament is a performance-staff puzzle unlike past World Cups. In the past, teams usually had one dominant challenge to plan around - altitude in Mexico, heat in the U.S., long travel in Russia. In 2026, spread across three countries, a single team could hit all three in the same run, sometimes within days of each other. A side could train near sea level and then play at roughly 7,350 feet in Mexico City days later, with temps ranging from the high 60s at cooler venues like Vancouver and Seattle toward the mid-90s in Dallas, Houston and Miami, plus flights of four to six hours between matches.

Former France defender Bacary Sagna says fitness coaches "will play a big part," planning training so players can "go hard and fast for 20-25 minutes, recover, and then go again." The staff consensus McCall heard: keep it simple. As Germany's 2014 head of performance Shad Forsythe put it, "You've got to have a big toolbox of options."

According to On3's Pete Nakos and Wilson Alexander, USC and Lincoln Riley are set to name Conor McQuiston director of AI - the first such role in college football.

McQuiston, currently the Trojans' director of analytics, will build AI models from the program's data to find advantages across game plans and scouting. He spent two years with the NFL as a research analyst for Next Gen Stats and a year at Prize Picks as an associate data scientist focused on the NFL, and worked as an undergraduate analytics manager at Michigan in 2021.

Arizona women's basketball head coach Becky Burke has hired Emily Meinert as the program's Performance Enhancement Assistant Coach.

Meinert spent the past two seasons with New Mexico women's basketball, joining the Lobos in 2024, and before that was an assistant S&C coach at Louisiana-Monroe, where she earned her master's in applied exercise science. "Emily understands what it takes to help athletes perform at their highest level," Burke said. A former collegiate guard, Meinert played at Northern Illinois and Parkland College.

Take a look inside Joey Guarascio's weight room at Tulsa.

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