Puailoa to receive some TV time

Call Sandpoint High School and dial the extension to the weight room and you’ll hear a voice mail message from a familiar voice.

You’ve reached the voice mail of Coach Puailoa. He’s unavailable at this time. Please leave your name and phone number and he’ll return your call as soon as possible.

It’s not even the voice of Satini Puailoa. Satini had a friend who has a professional recording voice tape the message years ago.

For whatever reason, I chuckled whenever I couldn’t reach Bulldog Central and the call bounced to voice mail. Something funny about a high school football coach having a professionally recorded voice mail message that tickled my funny bone now and then.

Two years removed from the head coaching gig, the voice mail remains. And Puailoa isn’t even teaching at Sandpoint this year.

He’s taken a year’s leave of absence to pursue a promising venture as a spokesman/consultant for Pneumex, a Sandpoint business that makes performance training equipment. It’s the same equipment the players on his final team trained on during their well-chronicled run to the 4A state championship game.

Rumors circulated the fall of 2003 that Puailoa’s Bulldogs must surely have been on steroids. How else could one explain the measurable advantages they had in size, strength and speed?

The primary piece of equipment they were using was a vibration plate. Athletes would bench, squat or clean weights while standing or sitting on the vibrating platform. The result was increased strength and speed.

So Puailoa, who saw the results of the equipment first hand, has gone to work for the man who developed it. After some tinkering the last couple of years, the business is placing the equipment in high school, college and professional sports teams’ weight rooms across the nation.

Which brings us to where Puailoa spent the bulk of his summer. From mid-July to early September, Puailoa was in McKees Rocks, Pa., a small town in western Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh, where ESPN is filming its latest reality series, “Bound for Glory.” It will premier Tuesday at 7 p.m. PDT. The one-hour show will run for eight weeks.

The show features NFL Hall of Fame middle linebacker Dick Butkus, who plays the role of head coach of a once-proud high school football program. The Montour Spartans have missed the playoffs for six straight years and it’s Butkus’ job to revive the program.

“It reminds me of the situation that I found at Sandpoint,” Puailoa said.

ESPN producers have told Puailoa he’ll be seen in a couple of the shows, and Pneumex’s equipment will be visible, too.

Butkus’ agent saw Puailoa give a presentation earlier this year, resulting in a personal invitation to Butkus’ Malibu, Calif., home to demonstrate the product. The long and short of it is Butkus hired Pneumex to come to Montour High and help train the players.

Montour is off to a 1-2 start. The Spartans lost a tough opener 14-7 but bounced back to equal their win total of a year ago with a 38-14 victory the following week. They got handled 47-15 last week.

Last Friday, Puailoa was standing on the southeast end of the sidelines at Barlow Stadium where Coeur d’Alene rallied from a 14-0 deficit for a 35-27 win over the home team. Puailoa, meanwhile, got frequent updates in the first half on how Montour was faring via his cell phone.

He’ll return to McKees Rocks next week for a week before completing his stint there. Pneumex is preparing a media blitz playing off the exposure its equipment will get in the ESPN show.

All of which will likely keep Puailoa crisscrossing the U.S. in his new venture.