Craig Fitzgerald, the director of strength and conditioning at Harvard, who made a name for himself with the remarkable intensity of the workout regimens he designed, will be leaving for a post at the University of South Carolina, he said today.

Fitzgerald, who came to Harvard in April, 2005 after a stint as the assistant director of strength and conditioning at the University of Maryland, worked directly with many of the University’s athletic teams, including football, men’s and women’s basketball, wrestling, and men’s tennis. He will serve as the head football strength coach in South Carolina, where he is due to report on Wednesday.

“I’m leaving a great group of people, the athletes here,” said Fitzgerald, who interviewed for the job in South Carolina last Friday, and was offered the position on Saturday before accepting yesterday. “These are the top of the tops. I’m just happy I got an opportunity to be with them.”

Football captain Carl D. Ehrlich ‘09, whom Fitzgerald informed of his decision earlier today, said that despite Fitzgerald’s attachment to Harvard, the chance to head a strength program in the Southeastern Conference, one of the nation’s most prominent athletic conferences, was simply too good to pass up.

“In college football, it’s understood that an opportunity like that is impossible to pass up,” Ehrlich said. “To be the head strength and conditioning coach at an SEC school—that’s being at the top of your industry, so it’s something that is unspoken—that it’s natural that somebody’s going to take that job.”

Fitzgerald, who, according to Ehrlich, was renowned for arriving at his office at 5:30 in the morning and working days that ran as long as 15 to 16 hours, was a master motivator who stressed accountability and got results.

“Missing lift is a mistake you make once,” Ehrlich said. “Even being late to lift is a mistake you make once. If one person’s late, then the whole team’s guilty. You have 110 college kids and you tell them they have to be in the weight-room every morning at 6:30 and none of them are late—he managed that.”

Senior forward Katie Rollins said the fitness gains realized in Fitzgerald’s work with the women’s basketball team were noticeable.

“When you get to the higher levels of division one college basketball, it’s all about strength and conditioning—can you outstrength and outrun the other team?” Rollins said. “And I think we’ve been able to at least stay with our opponents if not outrun them. It’s always been a strength.“

With Fitzgerald gone, assistant strength and conditioning directors Tim Mullen and Dan Perlmutter will be assuming much of the responsibility for keeping Harvard’s athletes on track. According to Fitzgerald, who made a policy of planning fitness programs a year in advance, the program is in good hands and will be moving “onward and upwards.”

“Coach Fitz will be the first to say that hes only a third of the program,” Ehrlich said. “When coach Fitz steps away there will be no letdown, we’ll keep on rolling.”

Fitzgerald, who is also noted for overseeing the relocation of the Harvard varsity weightroom in March 2007 from the Murr Center to its current 24,000 square-foot Palmer-Dixon locale—among the nation’s biggest—said that his proudest achievement was the level of attention he and the rest of his small staff were able to give each of Harvard’s 41 teams.

“Our mission is inclusion, and we treat everyone as equals,” he said. “Every student has been trained right and trained as well as they can train. Our alpine skiers and fencers and tennis players feel as much attention as our football players.”