Friday, May 30, 2003 | 10:22 a.m.
It's that time of year again when local high school and college students start lining up their summer jobs to make a little extra spending money.
Some will be lifeguards. Some will work at fast food restaurants. Some will get office jobs.
It's doubtful any job will be as difficult as the one UNLV head strength and conditioning coach Mark Philippi used to have.
"My dad used to run the Halquist Stone Quarry outside Milwaukee," Philippi said. "I'd spend my summer picking up these sheets of limestone and then break them up with a sledgehammer."
Talk about tough work. Try eight hours of lifting stone slabs weighing anywhere from 100 to 300 pounds on hot and muggy midwestern days.
"I don't think they even make convicts do that anymore," Phillippi said. "And my dad was pretty old school, too. You got a 15-minute break in the morning, 30 minutes for lunch and another 15-minute break in the afternoon. And there were no radios."
Robert Philippi worked in the quarry between Milwaukee and Madison for 40 years.
"His fingers looked like thumbs," Mark Philippi said. "He was a good work ethic developer."
Mark Philippi still finds himself hauling around 300-pound boulders these days. But now he does it as part of the World Strongest Man competitions that can be seen frequently on ESPN or ESPN2.
A 6-foot, 300-pounder, Philippi won the America's Strongest Man competition in Primm in 1997 and has spent the past four months organizing the Vegas Strongman Challenge which will take place on Saturday at 6 p.m. on the Ernie Becker Sr. Football Fields at Bill "Wildcat" Morris Rebel Park.
Philippi won't compete in the contest, which will serve as a qualifying event for the U.S. Nationals Aug. 8 in St. Louis. The top five finishers advance to that event.
"I just haven't had the time to train adequately for it," said Philippi, who earlier qualified for the U.S. Nationals during an event in Boston. "Putting this thing together is tougher than competing."
Still, 15 athletes have signed up in compete in the six events that include everything from a Camry press to the Stone Load, where competitors lift boulders weighing between 250 and 400 pounds and place them on top of 52-inch high boxes. Prize money totaling $11,000 will be awarded and segments will be taped for future TV broadcasts at the national and world championship level. Four-time World's Strongest Man winner Magnus Samualsson of Sweden and ESPN broadcaster Bill Kazmaier will also make special appearances.
Proceeds from the event will go to the Rebel Football Foundation. Philippi is hoping to make it an annual event that will eventually be televised.
It has been the popularity of ESPN's World Strongest Man competitions that has made Philippi something of a cult hero. Many UNLV football recruits over the years have credited the chance to work out in the weight room with Philippi as one of the reasons they picked the Rebels over other schools.
"There's no doubt that Mark has made a big impact with our kids here," UNLV coach John Robinson said. "They've seen what he has done on TV all the time, so they know he knows what he's talking about when it comes to strength and conditioning. ... He's as good as any strength coach I've worked with over the years and we had some very good ones at USC and in the NFL."
Philippi, 38, played NAIA football at Montana Tech University in Butte, Mon., and was a second team all-Frontier Conference pick as an offensive guard. But thanks in large part to those long summers in the rock quarry, he began to make his mark after football in powerlifting competitions.
In 1996, he won the national title in his 319-pound weight class at the American Drug Free Power Lifting Association Championships in St. Louis, finishing with a three-lift total of 2,165 pounds. He squatted 804 pounds, bench-pressed 540 pounds and dead-lifted 821 pounds.
It wasn't too soon after that Philippi turned his attention to Strongest Man competitions.
"Powerlifting hasn't really caught on anywhere, which is why I switched over to strongman competitions," Philippi said. "And it makes you train. It's not just lifting a bar or a platform. You've got to be in good athletic condition. You have different events that present different athletic challenges. And that gives you more reasons to train."
Philippi went to Scotland for the World Muscle Championships in 1997 to "basically try out. They had eight events in two days. I finished second there and that qualified me for World's Strongest Man. And it just so happened that the U.S. championships were in Primm that year."
Philippi, who joined the UNLV strength and conditioning staff in 1993, made a name for himself quickly, winning the America's Strongest Man title in Primm. The event still pops up ocassionally during rain delays or late night hours on ESPN.
"I get a lot of play out of it," Philippi said. "That show goes to 408 million households around the world on ESPN and the BBC. I get stopped around town more than anything now because of all those re-runs they show. It's been fun."
Well, maybe it hasn't been fun all the time.
During the 1998 World Strongest Man competition in Moracco, Philippi was winning his heat when his knee buckled during a car rolling event.
"I rolled it over once and was doing my second roll when all of a sudden the knee just popped," Philippi said.
The patella tendon in his left knee shreaded under the weight. Philippi had to have the tendon sewn back together and surgically reattached. That kept him from competing for almost eight months.
Still, he returned to the 1999 World's Strongest Man competition in Malta in 1999. However, he tied for third in his heat and failed to advance to the finals.
"I wasn't really in shape yet," Philippi said. "It was about nine months after the knee surgery and my training was really rushed. But I was still disappointed that I didn't advance to the finals."
Philippi seemed to be back in top form at the 2000 championships in Sun City, Africa, when disaster struck again.
While competing in an event called the Weight Circle -- picture lifting 600 pounds at the end of the bar and then carrying it around in a circle like the second hand on a watch -- Philippi's right knee gave out.
"I actually was feeling good," Philippi said. "I was walking good but then I got the weight too high. Basically my right knee popped. It was very similar to what happened to the left knee a couple of years earlier."
Philippi spent eight more months rebuilding the muscles in the right leg. He competed in both the 2001 and 2002 World's Strongest Man competitions but failed to advance to the finals each year.
He hopes to change that in 2003. If he finishes in the top five at the U.S. Nationals in St. Louis, he could benefit from some home cooking. Although it hasn't been officially announced, there has been speculation that this year's World's Strongest Man competition could be at Lake Las Vegas in September.
"No matter what happens, I feel I've been lucky," Philippi said. "I've been very fortunate to make a career out of my hobby and to also have great support from my wife, Tracey, and the rest of my family through all the ups and downs. They've been great. And it sure is a lot more fun lifting these large stones in competition than it was every day in the quarry."
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