Tom DiStasio goes by Coach D.

The last name is musical — DiStasio, capital S — and the pronunciation alone tends to slow things down in a Louisiana school hallway. "Keep it easy for the kids," he said. So, Coach D, it is.

But if the name is easy, the résumé behind it is anything but. Before arriving at Central High School, Coach D spent close to 20 years in strength and conditioning, taking him from upstate New York to Cornell, Southern Illinois, Sacramento State, Morgan State, and eventually into settings where athletic performance carried stakes far beyond scoreboards. He coached F-16 and F-35 fighter pilots at Luke Air Force Base. Then Navy SEALs at Naval Special Warfare Group 2 in Virginia Beach.

And now: Central High School, Central, Louisiana.

It doesn't follow an obvious line. But when Tom DiStasio talks about it, he makes it sound inevitable.

The whole thing traces back to a 12-year-old following his older brother into a weight room in Syracuse, New York. His brother was training for football. Tom tagged along, and a strength coach at Christian Brothers Academy — Mike Gerber, who had been the head strength coach at Syracuse University — took notice and took him under his wing.

"I knew that it was an area that I saw a lot of value in personally growing up," he said. "I was itching to get back into working with athletes."

He was an undergraduate intern in Cornell's strength and conditioning department before earning his graduate degree at Southern Illinois Carbondale. Nearly seven years at Sacramento State followed, then Morgan State, then COVID arrived, and his priorities shifted. He had kids. The college grind gave way to military performance work. That gave way to high school athletics — which, it turns out, is where he always wanted to be.

There's a small-world footnote to the SIU chapter: one of Central's defensive coaches, Korey Lindsey, was a player Tom coached as a graduate assistant at Southern Illinois. Lindsey later became a head coach at Liberty before landing at Central. "It's a small world," Tom said. "Very, very small."

Walk into Central's athletic performance facility, and you understand quickly that something serious is happening here. The room can train upward of 100 athletes simultaneously — football players working beside soccer athletes, cheerleaders and dancers beside baseball players — with enough organized stations that nobody gets lost. Tom describes it plainly: "What we consider the best facilities in the state of Louisiana."

But the room is just the room.

"We hang our hat on toughness, community, doing the right thing, learning how to handle and accept adversity," he said. "We want to set them up for those disciplines for life."

The program starts in sixth grade and runs straight through summer — 10 weeks, every single day. This past year, 50 cheerleaders and dancers were lifting during the school day. The commitment is year-round and across every sport.

To skeptics — and Tom knows they exist — he makes the case practically. The science of athletic development has moved well beyond double days and sprint sessions. Athletes who train smart, year-round, with proper movement mechanics are bigger, stronger, and faster. They resist injury better. They have longer, healthier careers. "We're spreading the load," he explained. "We're developing them in different facets."

But he's quick to say that what happens in the weight room isn't really about the weight room.

"It's not something where we have to go and have a seminar on leadership," he said. "They're living it."

The students who train here come from different backgrounds, different neighborhoods, different everything. They warm up together, count reps together, wear the same colors. "We all operate as one," he said.

That unity, Tom argues, reflects something fundamental about Central itself — a community he describes as blue-collar, hard-nosed, and "not afraid to work hard and test the limits." The school district is only about 20 years old as an official entity, but the roots go much deeper.

"We're a community that was built from the dirt," he said.

He credits Coach Simoneaux as the athletic director and Dr. Fountain for empowering the program to grow. But he also knows he's building on something that started long before him.

Alumni come through the weight room regularly. Different graduating classes, different eras of Central athletics. They walk in and get quiet for a moment.

"Oh, I remember in that corner," they say. "This used to be the pegboard."

Tom listens. He knows those memories mean something. He knows the kids training beside him right now will say the same things one day.

That's what he's building — not just stronger athletes, but something worth coming back to.