The South Carolina football program has a strength coach. TheBigSpur.com has learned that Luke Day will join Shane Beamer’s team as the football program’s main trainer and conditioner, according to sources. Day spent the previous year leading the Marshall football program in the same position.
Day was born in Hamilton, Ohio, and played two years at Morehead State on the defensive line for two seasons. He finished his degree in Miami (Ohio) and majored in physical education, and then entered the world of coaching.
Day spent time in the NFL with the New Orleans Saints as an intern in 2010 and also with Cincinnati Bengals in 2019. He had two stints at Marshall, and also spent time in college at UCF, USF and Cincinnati.
His first stint at Marshall, Day was with the 2016-18 program. After the program was 3-9 in its first season, Thundering Herd was 24-12 in its next three seasons. The program won both bowl games.
Marshall is currently without a football coach after the program decided not to renew his primary coach contract Doc Holliday, who was the USA Conference Coach of the Year.
Day will replace former South Carolina strength and conditioning coach Paul Jackson, who was not hired by Beamer after his arrival. Jackson is expected to land in Utah to occupy the same position, but his name also appeared in Baylor last week.
Below is information from his biography of Marshall University: Luke Day joined Marshall’s strength and conditioning team in January 2020.
Day returned to Marshall after he left, at the end of the 2018 season, for a position in Colorado. On his first stint in Huntington, he served the Thundering Herd for three seasons, after a year as an assistant on the Cincinnati Bengals conditioning and strength team.
Day is from Hamilton, Ohio, where he is significantly involved with the downtown ministry for the Hamilton Dream Center, helping with the Bengals. Prior to his year with Bengals, he spent two years as a strength and conditioning assistant at UCF, after stints at the USF (2012) and Cincinnati (2011-12). He also served as a summer volunteer in strength and conditioning with the New Orleans Saints in 2010.
Day graduated from Hamilton High School in 2006 and went to Morehead State, where he played on the defensive line for two years. He transferred “back home” to Miami (Ohio) and started working as a weight training intern and majored in physical education.
His first job was to design, develop and implement a strength training program at Mount Healthy High School in Cincinnati, and through that work he made connections with the University of Cincinnati, where he spent 14 months on the strength and conditioning team.
Day and his wife, Trisha, have a son, Jay and a daughter, Norah.