By KEVIN WEAKS
Special to pressbox1.com

UNION CITY, Tenn. - The Union City High School football program is getting a facelift ... from the inside out. Golden Tornadoes' second-year head coach Darren Bowling has spent his time not only building the team to play like a winner, but he has also spearheaded a project to make the facilities look like the home of a winner. Some of those changes have been purely visual, others have been done to make a direct impact on the field. New paint, new floor tiles, new uniforms, new weight room equipment ... all the changes have been part of Bowling's plan to upgrade the Union City program.

Not that the program had fallen on hard times. Far from it, in fact. It is, after all, a program that went to the postseason in 19 of Randy Barnes' 21 years as head coach, including Class 2A state championship games in 1997 and 2000, and then struggled at times under Jimmy Fishel but sill reached postseason play on three occasions with a spot in the 1A state title game in 2005.

But, a housecleaning was in order. On the field and off, the program was stagnating somewhat. So, Bowling and his staff rolled up their sleeves and went to work.

"The first thing we felt we needed to do was the weight room," Bowling said. "That is basically the foundation of your program, so it wasn't two weeks after we got here that we started in on the weight room — replacing weights and ordering new racks. We have 14 power racks in there now and a lot of rubber weights that we needed."

Turning his players into beasts in the weight room was the first step into making them hard hitters on the football field. Bowling was bringing in a smash-mouth offense in the midline veer, a big change from Fishel's run-and-shoot style, and an aggressive defense to match. The players needed to get tougher in a hurry.

"When I came in, we started breaking down everything," Bowling said. "Just like tearing up floors and tearing down walls, we did the same thing with the team. We really broke them down and tried to make them tough and understand that football is a vicious sport and that's how it's going to be played here. That's how it's been played here, and we're going to continue to play it that way."

Union City has also looked the part of a winner, upgrading when times called for it. The old concrete home stands were torn down when they became too unsafe, a fieldhouse was built to be the daily home of the program and an indoor practice facility came along in the 1990s. A walk inside the fieldhouse reflects the first step of the next generation. In addition to the improvements in the weight room, the coaches office has been cleaned, gutted and streamlined, the walls have been painted and the floors have been re-tiled with the school colors of purple and gold highlighted in several ways that include a large interlocked "UC" logo on in the varsity locker room.

With that work done, Bowling has turned his attention to the outside where the building has been painted gray as a base color to more clearly show the purple and gold trim, lettering and logos. "The gray is kind of like we did on the inside," Bowling said. "We didn't "purple and gold" everything. We went with a light light light gray, almost a white on the walls and then brought out the purple and gold with the stripes we put on it. And, we did it on the floors with purple and gold with light tiles around it. Everybody who came in really liked it and was impressed with it, so we thought we should do something like that on the outside as well. So, we've used a neutral color for the base to let the purple and gold shine.

"The purple and gold is an awesome color scheme. To the people who bleed purple and gold, we're still purple and gold. This is all about bringing that out and letting it shine by putting a neutral color behind it." As a fan of LSU, Bowling has a point with the gray background. While purple and gold also happen to be the LSU school colors, perhaps the most recognizable color in the Tigers' football program is white, the color of the team's popular jersey.

Bowling indicated that the players have provided input on all the changes, including a uniform look that has the interlocked "UC" on a gold helmet and a radically different jersey that features a tornado logo and a "UC" on a sleeve that resembles the New York Jets look.

"The kids all had a little input on everything we've done, from the logo to the uniforms and their design," Bowling said. "The seniors last year came in and got in on the decision making of that. They just wanted to do something new, and it was time to change and bring some excitement in the program. So, letting those guys have some ownership in it and letting them be able to make some decisions was good for them as well. I think anytime when players take ownership in a program, when they start to see and they start to buy into the program, the pride starts coming. And, then after that, they want to take ownership in the program and be involved in what's going on."

That has been an overall by product in letting the players have input. With new uniforms and a new look to their football home, the players now, Bowling says, take pride in where they are and who they represent.

Up next on Bowling's master plan will be to upgrade the indoor practice facility, which he describes as incomplete.

"I don't think it was completed the way it should have been, which would be to have some coaches' offices and player locker rooms over there as well," Bowling said. "We're going to finish out the turf itself this summer by putting numbers and hash marks down. Right now, it just looks like green striped carpet. Once we get the other things on it, that will make it stand out and look like a football field. And, then we're going to paint on the inside and then start on the outside there as well."

All of those things come back to making the product on the field better. So, there is a practical reason behind all of the improvements, which is ultimately to get Union City back in the state championship game. And, Bowling sees something else in Union City's future that the program has to be prepared to face — moving up in classification. Bowling believe the school system's numbers will put the football program in Class 2A within the next five years, and he wants to be ready.

A big part of being ready for that move will be increasing the number of players.

"I'm hoping the football numbers are going to increase, so when we go to double-A we'll have double-A numbers on the football field," Bowling said. "Right now, we're fine for single-A. Twenty-five kids is fine now, but when we start playing double-A, we'll need 35 to 40. That's the plan there, as well as just continuing to play the game hard and physical."

The current numbers in the program can be credited to, or blamed on, a shock value in the way things are under Bowling compared from the way they had been in previous years. Now, however, all the players who come into the program will know only Bowling's way. So, they'll know what to expect.

And, they can expect results. Winning will not just be expected but demanded. And, while last season's 10-2 campaign was likely a surprise to many close observers of the program, it was merely a step in the right direction for Bowling.

"I wasn't satisfied by any means," Bowling said. "In July, I felt we were going to have a chance to win 10. In this game, you need the breaks and for things to go your way to continue in the playoffs, but I did think we had a chance to win 10. When we lost to Westview in the first game, it was kind of a heartbreaker for us. But at the same time, I talked to our kids at the 50-yard-line after the game and said, 'Guys, look at that scoreboard because you're not going to see that again. We're fixing to sweep the rest of the season.' And, we did. We won our next 10 before a disappointing loss to a good McKenzie team (in the playoffs).

"I wasn't satisfied, but it didn't surprise me that those seniors led us to a 10-2 season our first year." Now in his second year with the program, Bowling has everything in purple and gold looking good. It's expected to only get better.