By: Jonathan Szczepaniak | Shelby-Utica News | Published August 7, 2023
SHELBY TOWNSHIP — It’s no longer the empty building it once was almost nine months back.
Since Englebert Training Systems, known as ETS, Sports Performance training center laid its foundation in the Shelby Township area, athletes of all levels and from many locations have meshed into the center on the basis of perfecting their crafts.
“There’s all those communities that I was aware of, but never realized that Shelby is kind of in the heart of all of those communities,” said Josh Renel, director of operations at ETS Shelby.
Renel wanted to establish a standard of not just respect and individualism, but the idea that each athlete would feel at home.
On any given day, you can walk in and see athletes conversing with coaches about their days or their sports with music and conversation between other athletes filling the air.
The athletes know what’s expected of them, and that’s because their day-to-day tasks are tailored around them.
“I think for me, it was just the attention to detail that everyone had here,” said Jack Bullock, a junior quarterback at Utica Eisenhower High School. “Initially, I was a little bit nervous because I never really had a trainer before, but coming in here with coach Josh (Renel), he was really educational. He really helped me with the step-by-step process, and that really made me want to come here.”
Aside from their personal workouts with stretching, benching and other free weight exercises, the athletes will group up for different unique exercises that will sometimes have them go one-on-one with each other in speed drills or strength drills.
It’s competitive and there’s friendly banter each time an athlete gets the better of another, but ETS conveys a comfortable atmosphere inside the facility.
“It’s a big family,” said Gabby Vasquez, a sophomore soccer standout at Eisenhower. “I started coming here, and then another girl joined, when before I was the only girl. Me and her are friends now and we come on the same basis, even though she goes to Lutheran North and I go to Eisenhower. We still connect on the basis that we both want to get better at our sport.”
With different schools converging in one place, athletes are bound to see some of their opponents, but Eisenhower sophomore wide receiver Braylon Burnside said all that is left behind once an athlete walks through the door.
“It really doesn’t matter what happened on the field here,” Burnside said. “Everyone loves each other and we’re all friends with each other here. We just leave that on the field. Every trash talk and everything that happened, we just leave that on the field.”
ETS Sports Performance is located at 14165 Rick Drive, in the area of 23 Mile and Schoenherr roads.