William Cary Koch

Age: 26
Occupation: Wide Receiver, Edmonton Eskimos
Hometown: Baton Rouge

To have power, you have to have balance.

To locate that will within to throw all your bones and muscles at another bundle of nerve and fiber, you first have to find your heart.

All strength radiates from it.

Canadian Football League pro Cary Koch is a student of this approach.

The wide receiver for the Edmonton Eskimos is spending his off-season at home in Baton Rouge. Here, he learns how to make the overlooked parts of himself stronger for the season ahead.

“Right can’t be bigger than left,” he says, and, “It’s all about the little muscles that add up to making you strong.”

He works himself to a puddle in the gym, lifting, over and over and over again, a weight that’s equal to an obese cat, say, or a single tire or a sack of potatoes—hardly things that, at first glance, would bulk up a man who’s got his sights set on the NFL.

It takes more discipline and endurance to work yourself into exhaustion using a 20-pound weight, Koch says.

It takes patience to work the basics.

To play ball really well, you’ll be practicing throwing it from the time you’re a squirt until you’re signing a pro contract and then longer, the Dunham School graduate says.

This year, he’s ahead of where he was last year. He’s met all of his workout goals.

“I’m easily driven,” he says.

But there’s that balance thing. He doesn’t ever forget it.

He embraces the parts of himself that aren’t all football.

He’s in love—a newlywed of one year. His voice still softens when he says his wife’s name. Tyler.

And he’s developed a passion for tie-dye, an ancient art form that was made mainstream in the 1960s by a pack of Haight-Ashbury sit-inners. Flower twirlers. Making love, not war.

In Koch’s world, it all makes perfect sense.

“The tie-dyeing is an outlet for me to be not crazy,” he says. “I like blessing people with these shirts. You can’t mess up on them. If you’re in a bad mood and you get in tie-dyed sheets, it just washes the day away.”