2024 Caribe Royale Orlando Hula Bowl Trailblazer Award Recipient: Chip Smith, Godfather of Sports Performance Training

Established in 2022, the Hula Bowl Trail Blazer Award was created to honor and recognize overlooked and undervalued individuals who’ve made great contributions to the game of football for many years and have reaffirmed through their perseverance and dedication to the sport. Chip Smith will join previous trailblazer winners such as Connie Carberg an Alejandro Villanueva to win the prestigious award. We are excited to give the Godfather of Sports Performance Training the Trailblazer Award in 2024!

Chip Smith, founder of Chip Smith Performance Systems (CSPS) has trained more professional athletes than any other coach or training facility in the world!  He and his staff have trained over 3,700 NFL players to date, countless MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS, and Olympic athletes dating back over 30 years.  

Smith has provided NFL Combine preparation for hundreds of players selected in the NFL Draft, training more than 60 Pro Bowlers, 40 first-round draft picks, and four Heisman Trophy winners.

Chip Smith has been called the “Godfather” of the sports performance training industry and continues to train athletes daily in the Atlanta facility.  CSPS trains and manages programs for all professional athletes.  

CSPS offers a wide variety of services for professional athletes. His specialized training programs, conducted during both the offseason and preseason, ready athletes for the demanding challenges of professional sports. Although sports performance is common among many top athletes in 2024, it was an entirely novel concepts over 30 years ago. Chip Smith pioneered combine training for football players, being the first to introduce this approach. Chip Smith was the first person to ever offer Combine Training to football players.

He created a custom-tailored program designed specifically for the athlete to meet their needs and goals. Utilizing speed/agility and conditioning, strength training, weight loss/weight gain, comprehensive nutrition, or rehabbing an injury, Chip Smith has become an esteemed figure in the sports performance training industry

Chip was one of Liberty University’s first ever student athletes and was a star football and baseball player for the University. Smith, Raised in Chesapeake, Va. as the son of a Baptist pastor, was a pioneer for both programs after Liberty’s founder, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, personally recruited him away from the University of North Carolina by offering him the school’s first full athletic scholarship.

Smith scored the first touchdown in Liberty history that fall and delivered the first hit for the baseball team when it debuted the following spring.

Chip has always been a leader on and off the field and is a strong man of faith. We are very honored to give Chip Smith the 2024 Caribe Royale Orlando Hula Bowl Trailblazer Award for his dedication to training athletes and continuing to spread the gospel through his hard work and dedication.