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Facility Finders: Trinity College (CT)

Blog| ByJohn Delf-Montgomery

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Trinity WR

Welcome back to another installment of Facility Finders, where I find the newest weight room remodels or projects from across the country, spanning all sectors of strength and conditioning. This process isn’t taught to any coach in school, and it is a once-in-a-career type of activity for many of us.

All facility designs need questions to be asked and decisions to be made, such as:

  • How big can or will the space be?
  • What type of equipment needs to be purchased?
  • Which brands, purveyors, and manufacturers should be chosen?

I want to highlight how to answer those questions, and many more, during the design process. First, we will examine how and why those decisions were made at Trinity College.

Facility Finders reached out to Coach Bill DeLongis, the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, who recently remodeled his weight room. Most coaches find themselves involved in renovating an existing facility because it is rare that the budgets at most schools allow for a brand-new building where the coach gets to design every square foot. This type of redesign is common at Division III schools like Trinity College, and DeLongis was able to upgrade the facility to a space that better fits his coaching philosophy.


Video 1. A virtual tour of the facility at Trinity College, remodeled under the direction of Coach Bill DeLongis.

Facility Decisions

In 2017, Coach DeLongis was asked to design a complete renovation of Trinity’s varsity weight room. After a year of meeting with equipment companies and choosing everything that he wanted, he saw his hard work pay off in 2018. His three main concerns for this project were:

  1. Quality of equipment.
  2. Flow of the room.
  3. Cost (via versatility/reliability).

“We run a lot of small group sessions with various teams sharing the room, so I needed sections in the room to create a better flow for when the room is crowded,” said Coach DeLongis, discussing how he needed the room to flow.

Trinity Dumbbells
Images 1a & 1b. Auxiliary training spaces around the racks at Trinity are separate from the main training area. These spaces feature dumbbells, kettlebells, versa climbers, and benches.

Trinity has a utility space that athletes use for warming up and medball work. It also serves as an auxiliary training space for larger groups.

“We sometimes put out squat stands on the outdoor turf to use if we need,” DeLongis said, mentioning a key small school hack to grow their square footage when needed.

It is multi-use spaces close to one another that enable schools like Trinity to train all of their 28 sports in a facility the size of theirs. Turf space in the front and back of the weight room gives coaches a place to have a team warming up or finishing while another team is in the weight room training. That ability—along with staffing—allows smaller weight rooms to function with a constant flow of teams and groups.

It is multi-uses spaces close to one another that enable schools like Trinity to train all of their 28 sports in a facility the size of theirs, says @johndelf99. Share on X
Squat Racks
Image 2. Five of the 10 total racks at Trinity that Sorinex fully customized

When deciding on the company they wanted to bring in to source their facility’s needs, Trinity chose South Carolina-based Sorinex. Why Sorinex?

“Sorinex is the industry-leading equipment company our country has to offer for our athletes. They are the best,” DeLongis said. “Our budget for this project was not massive, so a lot of the bells and whistles as far as attachments were something we would shoot to add over time. That ability to have a base rack from Sorinex that we can add on to slowly was the piece that schools like Trinity need.”

Similarly, many schools do not have the huge budget to pay for everything in one fell swoop, and new attachments are created after facilities are remodeled. The fact that Sorinex designs its products to essentially “plug and play” is an essential aspect of their versatility. As things evolve and change within the industry, the ability to add pieces that the athletes need—and remove the pieces that no longer serve their purpose—is something you don’t get with a fixed machine or specialty equipment.

Think about this: Jammer arms were a must-have for “explosive” training, then coaches realized how much better they were as liftoff releases. That versatility gives longevity to those add-ons, and I think Jammer arms would be obsolete now without that multi-use functionality.

Spotter Arms
Image 3. Showcasing Trinity’s customized Sorinex racks, including the specialty spotter arm attachments.

Reliable quality was the last factor that Coach DeLongis praised, explaining that they were replacing old Sorinex equipment from the early 2000s with new Sorinex equipment.

“Being at a D-III school, there is no telling when the next renovation will be—so I didn’t want to skimp on the racks,” DeLongis said, a statement that should resonate with a lot of coaches undergoing similar projects around the country.

DeLongis also went to numerous other college weight rooms on site visits to learn from their coaches and see their spaces. These visits gave him ideas and helped him solidify his decision to source from Sorinex. He specifically remembered that Sorinex representatives brought him to their headquarters in South Carolina, where he was able to design the space with their sales teams and put his hands on and try their products. These companies specializing in customization want to make your space as efficient as possible.

These companies specializing in customization want to make your space as efficient as possible, says @johndelf99. Share on X

I think about how coaches have always complained about pillars or poles being in the middle of the room and how it wasted square footage. Now these companies design storage that wraps around those poles and pillars, so there is no more wasted space. They are geniuses who lean on their expertise and the input and philosophies of the coaches who are their clients.

“Feeling like a valued customer was the icing on the cake,” Coach DeLongis added.

Cable Stacks
Image 4. Cable stacks and low row stations on the adjacent wall at Trinity allow for a more open floor plan by the racks. Also pictured are the squat stands used in the turf area.

Specialty Equipment

We all love specialty equipment, and at Trinity College, they are no exception. Trinity utilizes technology like the RepOne Velocity Based Training Encoder (tether) and B Strong Blood Flow Restriction Kits for hypertrophy training and athletes recovering from injuries. Other pieces of specialty equipment they use in programming are cable stacks with low row stations, weight releasers for eccentric work, jammer arms, overcoming isometric boards, and triphasic hooks for plyometrics.

Additionally, they break out some “strongman”-type equipment: atlas stones, sandbags, yoke, logs, and farmer’s handles to help with general physical preparation work.

“Having the strongman equipment is something that our athletes do within training or on off days to help with cardio and general strength building,” DeLongis replied when I asked how they were able to use it enough to justify the purchase cost. “These pieces of equipment are used almost every day by almost all of our sports.”

Lastly, some recovery modalities they use outside of the training room include foam rollers and body tempering rollers.


Video 2. The importance of a balanced strength coach refrigerator and the need for coaches to stay fueled between sessions.

Stay in Touch

Thank you again for reading this Facility Finders installment featuring Trinity College. Remodeling a facility is something that a lot of coaches will have the ability to do at some point in their careers, and I hope the remodel at Trinity can help you in your next project. As always, feel free to comment below on things you would like to see next or something you have questions on!

Since you’re here…
…we have a small favor to ask. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. — SF


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John Delf-Montgomery

John Delf-Montgomery entered his first season at Piedmont as Head Strength and Conditioning Coordinator in the fall of 2021, filling the role as Piedmont’s first strength and conditioning hire. Delf-Montgomery joined the Piedmont staff after spending time in the private sector as Director of Sports Performance for a high-performance company in Springfield, Illinois.

As the Director of Sports Performance, Delf worked with clients while developing, implementing, and supervising all programming. He was also charged with educating new coaches in the industry as the Internship Coordinator and managed the business from an operations standpoint.

During his stint in Illinois, Delf served as Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach/Interim Director of Strength and Conditioning at the University of Illinois-Springfield from January 2019 through September 2020. He worked specifically with women’s basketball, men’s soccer, volleyball, golf, and track and field throwers. The men’s soccer team reached the GLVC Conference tournament in back-to-back seasons and women’s golf earned an NCAA Super Regional appearance along with a representative in the NCAA National Championship.

Delf was able to gain valuable experience during his time at Berry College as a student worker in the athletic weight room, where he was in charge of programming, nutrition, and implementation for several teams, including men’s and women’s basketball, men’s lacrosse, golf, and football.

Delf earned his Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology from Berry College in 2018 and his Master of Arts in Education from the University of Illinois-Springfield in 2020. He was also a member of the three-time SAA Conference Champion football team at Berry from 2014-18 and the men’s basketball team in 2017-18.

He is a certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association.

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