Watch Watch a video of the Strength Team in action The red rubber stretched into a round ball and grew bigger as Neil exhaled.
“If Dallas were to cough, sneeze or even hiccup, all the pressure in this bottle could come back and damage his lungs,” former Florida State football player Clarence Lee told students lining the bleachers in the Big Sky High School gym.
The students at Tuesday's assembly responded with encouraging yells and eye-widening anticipation.
With the water bottle stretched out to 4 or 5 feet in diameter, Neil turned to the crowd, a vein on his neck pulsing white and red, and his face screwed up tight against the impending burst.
Kaaablaaaam!
The crowd screamed, and the team had the attention of everyone in the room.
Mike Hagen, a former UM running back, founded the Strength Team, which has traveled to 30 countries and countless high schools and churches across the United States.
With 17 athletes weighing in at more than 4,000 pounds collectively, the Strength Team can crush concrete, bust Louisville sluggers across their knees, rip phone books in half with their bare hands and burst hot-water bottles with the air in their lungs.
Which means people listen when a 300-pound man who just snapped a baseball bat across his knee like a toothpick talks about the overwhelming emotion of losing his mother to cancer and his brother to a drug overdose, or about loving his kids so much that they feel valuable.
“My son asked me, ‘Daddy, are you going to speak to another school?' ” Lee told the crowd. “I don't take this for granted. I'm not speaking to just a school. I believe in my heart you are part of the greatest generation that ever existed. I said, ‘Son, I've got a meeting with potential future doctors, future lawyers, future scientists and even future comedians.' ”
Lee, who played for Florida State's 1993 national championship team and who can bench-press more than 600 pounds, left the students hanging on his every inspirational word - without so much as a reference to the feats of strength that grabbed their attention just a few minutes before.
“My grandpa had cancer,” Billy Peltier, a Big Sky student, said after the show. “So I know how (Clarence) felt.”
Peltier was glad to get out of class for an hour, but he also connected through the shared platform of carnival-like entertainment where Lee and Neil could broaden the scope of their talk to areas of particular interest to teens.
“Any time you deal with students who are 16 to 18 years old, there is so much that is against them in life,” said Mark Rodriguez, the Strength Team manager.
Drugs, peer pressure and suicide are the biggies, but Lee and Neil addressed the nitty-gritty of high school life, those areas that are some of the most obviously painful.
“The words that come out of my mouth as I speak to you right now is the most powerful thing you can possess,” Lee told the crowd. “Not a gun, not a knife. When they said sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me - that's the biggest lie I ever heard. That's why you've got to be careful what you say to one another.”
Students jockeyed for position on the gym floor as the bell rang signaling the next class period.
But they didn't scramble for the doors. They made their way to the two men wearing blue sweatsuits to say thank you and to express what the assembly meant to them personally.
“I thought it was like really inspirational,” said Katie Showers, a Big Sky High School student. “And it just opened up my eyes to realize life is really short and you need to take advantage of it.”
The feats of strength are a platform on which the students and the speakers can meet eye to eye, according to Rodriguez. The purpose is not to show off the physical strength, but to put it in context with the internal strength and strength of character.
“I learned that strength is not always physical,” Showers said. “It's mental and emotional, too.”
School assemblies are only half of what the Strength Team does.
Motivational speeches that are geared toward performance-oriented students turn into evangelistic-themed gospel events in the evenings, when the Strength Team typically performs in churches.
“We're more family-focused at night,” Rodriguez said. “More faith-based.”
The Strength Team will perform at area schools throughout the week, with evening performances featuring team members breaking giant slabs of ice and burning concrete bricks in the evenings at South Hills Evangelical Church, starting Wednesday.
“We shine a light at the end of a tunnel,” Rodriguez said. “Whatever you're going through now might seem impossible, but you can make it, just don't quit.”
Reporter Timothy Alex Akimoff can be reached at
523-5246 or at tim.akimoff@missoulian.com.
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