GALION — Members of the Galion Tigers were sweating to the oldies Monday morning.

No, Richard Simmons wasn’t leading an exercise routine at Heise Park. It was first-year Galion football coach Matt Dick encouraging the Tigers through some old-fashioned gassers to open the first day of practice.

Dick takes over for Chris Hawkins, who is the new head coach at Ontario High School. Dick had been the offensive coordinator at Fredericktown the past six years. This is his first head-coaching job.

After a bit of stretching and limbering up, on an extremely humid Monday morning, Dick had his team lineup by class, and run 40-year dashes … four of them back to back. And his plan was to run one set for every opponent the Tigers will face this year.

Dick expects his team to be in tip-top physical condition. He explained that each 40-yard dash symbolizes one quarter of a game.

On the fourth 40 of each set, the players yelled out the name of an opponent as they took off. The 2016 Galion Tigers open the season at home Aug. 26, against county and former league rival Bucyrus. So at the end of the first set, the roar was Redmen.

And Dick has lofty goals for this team.

“It takes 60 quarters to win a state championship,” he told his squad, as they started the third of a possible 15 sets of gassers.