Student Athlete Headquarters aims to help youths physically and academically

At Student Athlete Headquarters (SAHQ) athletes of all kinds are making their dreams reality.

Take Aidan Sandoval, who at age 9, says he wants to play college ball.

He’s especially good at baseball, says his dad, Eldorado principal Martín Sandoval, but he also plays soccer and basketball.

“He’s got some natural talent and here he’s getting faster and stronger,” he says of his third grader. “He’s building speed and agility and he’s learning to be competitive.”

As part of his recent basketball training, he ran drills, double-stepping in and out of a flat ladder on the artificial turf-covered gym floor. Later, he will dodge and leap over rows of hurdles and then pull a weighted sled in relays with his teammates the length of the gym.

“It’s fun,” the younger Sandoval says.

His dad says he’s impressed with the training and with the coaches. “They’re great with the kids and they are great role models.”

Both coaches who founded the nonprofit SAHQ, LaReylle Cunningham and Bree Rode, were Division 1 athletes in college. Cunningham played professional football and Rode, after coaching at the college level, is coaching boys basketball at Sandia High School.

It’s their dream to offer the kind of sports-specific training that helps student athletes excel and achieve not only their physical goals but academic goals as well, they say.

“I’m one of seven kids and I grew up in a family of coaches. We set our goal for the year and then we started working on it. We knew we had to outwork, out train our opponents,” Rode explains. “That’s what we’re doing here. We get up at 5 a.m. and leave at 10 p.m.”

Although the gym, 1404 Lead SE, is well-equipped, they continue to think creatively, to make the best use of their sometimes limited resources, Cunningham says.

They have big tires, sleds and other non-conventional training tools. Everyday, Cunningham devises new drills to keep athletes energized, to build muscle performance, speed, agility and coordination, he says. “It’s an urban workout.”

It’s not just for athletes but also for people who want to train like athletes, he explains.

Sonja Brown, who works at Albuquerque’s VA Medical Center, says she found SAHQ because her son, now playing sports at Western New Mexico University, trained at the gym to get ready for college.

“He told me it would be too hard for me,” she explains while doing hanging leg lifts on the far side of the gym. “But I keep coming back. I’ve lost 23 pounds.”

She works out with Cunningham three times a week.

Another adult, Johnny Gallegos, one of Rode’s childhood friends, comes to the gym at least six days a week. He can do all the drills that Cunningham devises, but it wasn’t always that way.

When he first came, his weight made it impossible for him to do many things. So Rode started walking with him around Roosevelt Park and training with very light weights.

“Now he can do it all,” she says. “He even runs up and down the sand hills with us. We train hard, but we train smart.”

Gallegos has lost about 300 pounds in the year SAHQ has been open.

“I was over 600 pounds. I was miserable. It was frustrating at first. But everyday, if you just do what you can, pretty soon you can do more stuff,” he says. “Every morning I run three miles, even in the snow. I come here and train. SAHQ literally saved my life.”