<e he began his job in the fall of 2013, Carleton Strength and Conditioning Coach Jim Jarvis has made an enormous impact on the athletic community. What makes Jarvis so unique is his passion for his work; he is at the stadium by six every morning and rarely leaves before seven each night. For each student-athlete, he creates specific year-round lifting and conditioning programs and is constantly motivating each student-athlete throughout their workout. Imagining Carleton athletics without Jarvis is like telling a Carleton student you are going to bed at a decent hour and actually doing it. It is just impossible.
So who is the man behind the Monster? First, in the spring of 2008, Jim Jarvis graduated from the University of Minnesota-Duluth (UMD) with a degree in exercise science. That summer, he moved to Idaho to pursue a job as Director of Sports Performance at a private strength and conditioning club that also contracted with a nearby junior college. A year later he moved back to Minnesota and became the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Minnesota-Morris and established their first strength and conditioning program. Soon after, he started coaching at Northern State University, and stayed there for two years while he acquired his master’s degree in Sports Performance and Leadership. But as fate would have it, when a position opened at Carleton College, he applied and was chosen as Carleton’s Head Strength and Conditioning Coach.
Aside from coaching at Carleton, Jarvis is also a hockey referee and a baseball umpire. He comes from an extremely athletic background where in high school he was a tri-sport athlete, playing football, baseball, and hockey. He continued his hockey career at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire but decided to stop playing when he transferred to UMD. Although Jarvis is no longer a hockey player, he is an avid competitive
power-lifter. He began training in 2014 and has participated in two competitions since then. Power-lifting meets consist of three events: squat, bench, and deadlift. At his first meet in December of 2015, he placed third in his weight class (220 pounds). He is currently training for his third meet which will take place in December of this year. When asked what he enjoys most about power-lifting, Jarvis said, “I love the competition. But I also like watching people push themselves and set world records. It’s just a lot of fun.”
Even though his days are packed tight, Jarvis still finds time to enjoy other hobbies such as downhill skiing. While he claims he is an excellent skier, he laughingly shared a story of a time when he was up in the mountains of Idaho with his friends skiing. “There was a ski hill that
led straight to a parking lot that allowed skiers to ski to their cars; the night before I went skiing, ice had melted over the parking lot,”
he said. “I started skiing down this hill and everything was going fine until I reached the parking lot. I was sliding across the ice and went flying into a car. I just bombed right in there.” Jarvis walked away with a dislocated left shoulder. Fortunately, the car was just fine.
But behind the beard and the BodyBuilder shirt, Jim Jarvis is a down-to-earth, practical man with a big heart. He enjoys fishing, hunting and hanging out with his ten-year-old Labrador retriever named Abbey. But he said that if he could have any pet in the world it would be a penguin because they are “cute and fluffy” and he “identifies with them.” He loves Adam Sandler movies and his favorite music day of the week in stadium is Metal Mondays. Jim Jarvis is an inspiring and impressive member of Carleton College athletics. At the end of my time with him, and as he pops the cap off a Monster bottle (the white flavor—his favorite), he reminisced on his time here and why he enjoys coaching Carleton
athletes. He stated proudly, “I like the interaction with college athletes. [They] come in as clueless little freshmen and then all of a sudden they are lifting 230 pounds a year later. I enjoy going to games and seeing the hard work in the weight room pay off on the field.”