Libby's Sauer inducted into William & Mary Athletics Hall of Fame

A native of Libby, who built a national reputation in collegiate strength and conditioning, has earned one of the highest honors in college athletics. 

John Sauer, a Libby High School graduate and longtime leader in the field, was formally inducted into the College of William & Mary Athletics Hall of Fame this fall in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Sauer, now the Director of Strength and Conditioning for Montana State University in Bozeman, spent 31 years at William & Mary, where he became one of the most influential figures behind the school’s athletic success. He joined the program in 1988 after earlier stops at Clemson, Utah and SMU, stepping into a small, outdated 2,000-square-foot weight room that served just 15 athletes at a time.

“When I took the position, they had never had a full-time staff member do strength and conditioning,” Sauer said.

He initially told the athletic director he envisioned being there for three years. He ended up staying for quite some time longer. He originally worked with three teams at William and Mary, but was continually asked to train more teams, and eventually had 500 athletes working under him. William and Mary invested in the program and began upgrading facilities and hiring additional staff to support him. 

By the time he left the school in 2019, he had helped shape an 8,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art training center—eventually named in his honor.

During his induction ceremony, Sauer acknowledged just how unexpected the honor felt. In his Hall of Fame speech, he admitted, “I’ll be honest with you, I did not see this coming. When I got this call, I thought Brian Mann was messing with me.”

Mann, William & Mary's athletic director, was not playing a joke on the son of Judy and the late John Sauer.

In more than three decades at William & Mary, Sauer oversaw strength and conditioning for all 23 varsity programs and played a central role in elevating the school’s football success. Tribe football players earned All-America honors for strength in 30 consecutive seasons under his guidance. 

Forty of his athletes reached the professional level—35 in the NFL—and nine were drafted. His peers honored him with multiple regional awards, and in 2005, he earned the prestigious designation of Master Strength and Conditioning Coach, one of only seven in the nation at the time.

Sauer often credits his upbringing in northwest Montana for instilling the work ethic that guided his career. In his speech, he reflected on growing up in a logging family, saying, “My parents taught me the value of hard work and growing up in northwest Montana, the big industry there was logging.”

He said he grew up playing a lot of sports in Libby, but was never the star athlete.

“When I graduated high school in Libby, in the summertime, you spent time in the mill or in logging,” Sauer said. “If that’s not something that doesn’t make you motivated to go to college, I don’t know what does.” 

He also shared this moment that pushed him toward higher education rather than staying in the logging industry: “When I graduated from high school, I went to work for my dad in his logging business. I did that for about a week… and I thought, I think I’m going to go to college.”

At the University of Montana, Sauer became involved in powerlifting and aspired to make it his career. He joined a strength and conditioning association and received a monthly magazine featuring articles on the training methods employed by schools across the country. This sparked a passion that hasn’t slowed to this day.

He got into a student assistant program at Delta State to get his Master's Degree and then became an assistant at SMU. He then spent time in Utah and at Clemson before getting the position at William and Mary.

“I never really envisioned this, but I do tell people who are looking to get into this line of work that you might have to move around,” Sauer said. “You’ve got to be prepared to move because a position where you spend 30 years at just really doesn’t exist anymore. It’s rare.” 

Throughout his speech, Sauer emphasized the mentors who guided his path and the relationships built over decades of coaching. “All these people I’m talking about, I mean, I can’t thank you enough to help make my 31 years here what they were,” he told the audience, adding, “This is a very special place to me and it always will be.”

Sauer joined Montana State’s athletic staff in 2019 and continues to work in the strength and conditioning field while maintaining ties to the many former athletes he coached. He says several still make stops in Bozeman to reconnect. 

“The relationships I developed here were special,” he said. “Young people still contact me to this day.”

He added he’s seen kids come in as average athletes and build themselves into All-Americans.

“I still have contact with people from 1988,” Sauer said. “I really can’t believe it, but you help train someone who you also trained their mom or dad.”

At Montana State, Sauer has seen the university invest in its strength and conditioning program just like William and Mary did during his years there. He said they’ve gotten the facilities to as good as they can be, and now they’re taking new steps into technology.

“It’s a changing science, I’m doing training things with athletes I wouldn’t have done 10 years ago,” Sauer said.

After more than four decades in the profession, the Libby native’s induction into the William & Mary Athletics Hall of Fame solidifies his legacy as one of the most impactful strength coaches in collegiate sports—a hometown success story whose influence now spans generations.