PELLA— The game lacked tension but not emotion for a pair of former Central College roommates when the University of Tennessee rolled up a 71-0 football victory over Kent State University Saturday.
           
Charles Friday, who served as Central's assistant strength and conditioning coach from 2013-21, is now head football sports performance coach at Kent State. Meanwhile, David Young is assistant director of football sports performance at Tennessee. They're both 2012 Central grads and in their senior year at Central, shared a Gaass Hall room with current Central assistant strength and conditioning coach Matt Sagar.
           
Friday and Young reconnected on the field of Tennessee's Neyland Stadium in Knoxville Saturday, before nearly 102,000 orange-clad fans gathered for the kickoff.
           
"It was great to see Charles," Young said. "It's always exciting to be a part of games at Neyland Stadium here. It was a really fun experience."
                           
Friday said the Tennessee reunion sparked football memories that preceded his time at Central.
           
"It was kind of surreal when you think about where we started to where we are now," he said. "Even going back to high school. I'm from a small school in Illinois, a farming community where we hardly had any bleachers. We would have people back their pickup trucks to the sideline and sit on the tailgates. Then going to a place like Central, which was obviously much bigger than that and then, the next thing you know, you're in a stadium of 100,000 people."
           
Friday, Young and Sagar are among numerous Dutch strength and conditioning alumni who are benefiting from one of the nation's top programs. Central is among only four U.S. colleges with accreditation from the Council on Accreditation of Strength and Conditioning programs and has an extensive intern program. The college has three full-time strength and conditioning coaches.
           
"I think Central gives our students and our strength and conditioning majors kind of the best of both worlds," said head strength and conditioning coach Kyle Johnson. "You get the applied information from your coursework in kinesiology and strength and conditioning classes, but also what really helps is being able to apply that as you learn it and getting the on-the-floor coaching experience through our internship programs.
           
"We have interns working with a wide variety of sports here and now also at Pella High School, so a bigger opportunity to apply the principles of training, of exercise, speed, agility and strength and also help you sharpen your coaching skills."
             
Johnson said Central typically has 15 interns each academic year and sends students off campus for internship experiences as well.
           
Former Dutch strength coach Jake Anderson helped Young land an internship at the University of Iowa and launched him on his career track. After serving as a graduate assistant at the University of Memphis, Young worked for the NFL's San Francisco 49ers, then Vassar College and the University of Central Florida before arriving at Tennessee.
           
At every stop, Young carried lessons learned at Central from Anderson and Johnson.
           
"Working with Jake and then Kyle while I was at Central was really valuable," he said. "I took a lot from them, both from the X's and O's standpoint of strength and conditioning but also learning how to build relationships with people.
           
"The level of athlete is a little bit different, but the foundational elements of coaching are the same. I can remember lessons that I learned working with the women's soccer team when I was running their training at Central that still apply when I'm running groups today at Tennessee. Athletes want to know people care about them and have their best interests at heart. Jake used to say they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
           
The game also remains the same, said Friday, who also got to spend time with Young the preceding evening at the team hotel..
           
"It's still a 120-yard football field that's 53 yards wide," he said. "Once the game gets started, the oohs and ahs dissipate and it's just football. But it was a really cool experience to share that kind of moment with David and take it back to our time at Central."
           
Friday's duties at Kent State extend beyond the weight room, as he has football operations responsibilities, but his teaching methods were honed at Central.
           
"I still use a lot of the same things I learned when I was at Central, even going back to Jake when we first started, and with Kyle," Friday said. "There is not a whole lot of difference."
           
Any suspense about the outcome at Neyland Stadium Saturday drifted away as swiftly as the waters of the adjacent Tennessee River as the Vols made nine trips to the famed checkerboard end zones in erupting for 65 first-half points. Still, Friday said the Kent State players showed some second-half grit.
           
"We only gave up six points in the second half," he said. "I think that really shows where our guys are and their response mechanism."
           
The Golden Flashes will need that kind of relentless effort when they remain on the big stage Saturday with a trip to No. 10-ranked Penn State University.
           
"When you're younger, you kind of dream of opportunities like this," Friday said.

Meanwhile, No. 6 Tennessee has a pivotal Southeastern Conference tussle at No. 15 Oklahoma Saturday evening. Young is savoring his work as part of Tennessee's football program which, like Central's, oozes tradition.

"(Each game) is a pretty cool experience," he said.