FootballScoop is proud to announce that Kurt Hester (Tulane) is the 2022 FootballScoop Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Year presented by AstroTurf as selected by prior winners.
Let's take a quick review of Tulane's season last fall.
A 12-win campaign that included a suffocating triumph in the American Athletic Conference title bout.
One of the most stirring comebacks in recent college football postseason history.
And a knack for nailing down victories time and again in the fourth quarter.
All of those elements and more were on display last season by Tulane football, and at the root of that success was director of strength and conditioning Kurt Hester.
For those reasons and more, Hester prior winners tabbed FootballScoop’s Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year presented by AstroTurf and as voted on by Hester’s peers who have previously won the top honor.
“Kurt is just so smart with his approach,” Tulane head coach Willie Fritz told FootballScoop. “Everything he plans is focused on injury prevention, improving speed on the field, positional strength. I was a strength coach myself for 15 years, and I’m blown away by how in touch he is with the players and how he gets everything out of them. The size and speed growth even since the end of this past season is very noticeable.
“He’s a big reason we had the season we had and why the future is so bright for Green Wave football.”
Earning his realm of the sport’s top honor from his peers, Hester is centerpiece in Fritz’s captivating revival of the Green Wave.
Hired in January 2022, Hester had risen to among the top strength professionals in college football from a decorated, lengthy career at Louisiana Tech. He’s helped tutor more than 15 NFL Draft picks in his career, including a pair of Tulane third-round selections in this spring’s selection process.
A Tulane graduate who has trained with Navy SEALS as well as held stints at prestigious D1 in Nashville, Tennessee, as well as working with the globally known Manning Passing Academy, Hester has a bevy of national certification specialties and also helped run the LSU baseball strength and conditioning program in the late 1990s under iconic Tigers coach Skip Bertman, helping the Tigers to a national title.
The FootballScoop Coaches of the Year awards presented by AstroTurf are the only set of awards that recognize the most outstanding position coaches in college football. The prior winners selected this year's winner.
Previous winners of the Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Year award are Don Sommer (TCU, 2008), Joey Batson (Clemson, 2009), Kevin Yoxall (Auburn, 2010), Shannon Turley (Stanford, 2011), Kaz Kazadi (Baylor, 2012), Pat Ivey (Missouri, 2013), Zac Woodfin (UAB, 2014), Ken Mannie (Michigan State, 2015), Tim Socha (Washington, 2016), Zach Duval (UCF, 2017), Lew Caralla (Buffalo, 2018), Tommy Moffitt (LSU, 2019), Chad Scott (Coastal Carolina, 2020), and Scott Sinclair (Georgia, 2021).
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