Hous of Pain?

Strength coach Craig Fitzgerald left Harvard almost a year ago, but it seems his fear-inspiring legacy just won’t die.

FlyBy gave you an update on good ol’ Fitzy last spring, when he had moved his terrifying antics to the South Carolina Gamecocks’ football program. Considering that the weightroom overlord was moving to a big-time SEC program, we at FlyBy naturally assumed that his skill as a coach was being rewarded.

According to former Harvard basketball player Drew Housman ’09, though, the “250 pounds of barrel-chested meathead” that was Craig Fitzgerald may not have been as wonderful as everyone made him out to be. Read on after the jump to get a glimpse into Fitzy’s apparent house of horrors.

Current Crimson athletes are more or less barred from talking negatively about coaches. After all, no one wants to rip the man assigning lifts while he’s still around. But Housman, now a year removed from what he describes as nightmarish weightroom sessions, is letting fly a (now) two-part series entitled “The 4 Year War: Drew vs. Coach Fitz.” Highlights of Housman’s rants include:

“Each time I bent down to squat there was an audible pop or clicking noise.  I was disconcerted.  Coach Fitz could have cared less.

‘Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing.’  This “nothing” was a precursor to debilitating tendonosis that would cripple me for much of my junior year, but no big deal right?”

“He then began beasting out curl after curl and yelling ‘Ya! You think the Vermont Coach can do this!? No way the Vermont coach can do this!’  There is no doubt that the Vermont coach could not due [sic] as many reps curling 135 pounds as the man I saw before me.  Problem was, Coach Fitz let this macho, you-are-only-as-good-as-how-much-weight-you-can-throw-around mentality drive his whole approach to training athletes.”

“Apparently me wanting to totally abandon his program was equivalent to me telling him I had killed his firstborn child.  He simply could not handle such insubordination.”

Not surprisingly, Housman explains that the strained relationship leads to a couple of confrontations. Read for yourself to decide if coach Fitz was as out of line as Housman thinks, but if the former baller is telling the truth, FlyBy’s prayers are with the poor Gamecocks.