Fitness guru Fred Roll, his long hair in a ponytail, is urging Lawrence High senior lineman Kyle McTaggart, his hair shaved into a mohawk, to give it all he has chugging up steep Daisy Hill on the campus of Kansas University.

A ponytail? A mohawk? This is the state of tradition-rich Lawrence High football?

You better believe it is. It’s not what’s on the outside that defines a Chesty Lion. Drive comes from deeper than that. Roll was the driver, McTaggart and his mates the driven Tuesday morning. Earlier, the players had done their weight-lifting in the school’s auto mechanics garage because asbestos removal during the school’s remodeling made the weight room off-limits. The machines couldn’t be transplanted, so they manage with dumbbells.

As the Daisy Hill runs moved into their final phase, Roll reminded the athletes not to think about themselves, rather to think about how tired their opponents will be late in the game.

Said McTaggart: “The people who are here know we can count on each other, the more late in the game we get, we know that we have somebody who’s going to step up and make a big play.”

He knows he wears more than a number, 56, on his jersey. It symbolizes a standard based on a history established by predecessors who will remain part of the program, if only as spectators, for the rest of their lives.

“When they come and watch, that just means, like Coach (Dirk Wedd) always says, they’re coming out to watch who’s wearing their number and to see if that person is going to step up,” McTaggart said. “They’re coming to see if Lawrence High is still the same old Lawrence High: hard-hitting, won’t stop until the whistle blows. It means a lot. It helps us play harder because we want to play for them, not just for ourselves. It’s as important to them as it is to us.”

McTaggart said he was looking forward to the first time a player comes up to him and tells him he once wore No. 56.

“That will make me feel good,” he said.

Patrick Johnson, a two-way lineman, wears No. 58. He need not look beyond his family tree for inspiration from a Lawrence High football player of a bygone era. Patrick’s grandfather, Rex, is former Sheriff of Douglas County and a fine athlete despite having full use of only one of his arms.

“He has a little bit of a withered arm from an accident when he was young,” Patrick said. “He still played college football. And he played baseball with one arm. He wouldn’t let that bother him. He pushed and had enough heart. And he said it was because of Lawrence High football that he could push through all that and still want to play. I remember him talking about being a Lawrence High football player and how special a feeling it is.”

The grandfather regularly attends the grandson’s games.

“He just loves this atmosphere because of the style the coaches play,” Patrick Johnson said. “Because it’s smash-mouth football. We work for every yard, and he likes that. Growing up around him, I found out he had to work for everything.”

If that means the grandson and teammates need to work a little harder because the weight machines are off limits, or it means pushing through one more sprint up Daisy Hill, it’s not as if it’s any more than what their forefathers did.