The road to athletic success in the 2023-24 school year starts now for Kiefer athletes, with “Summer Pride” workouts starting this week.
Student athletes from all sports began training last Monday at Kiefer High School, with an emphasis on getting back in shape, increasing speed, agility and strength.
The football team is up early and out on the football field by 7 a.m., working on football-specific drills before transitioning to more general workouts at 8:00. Athletes from all other sports arrive at 9 and junior high kids enter the mix at 10.
“At Kiefer, we do a Summer Pride program that is all-inclusive for all of our athletic programs,” said Trojans athletic director Trent Worley, who also coaches both the football and track and field teams. “We run through about 135 kids a day. Our high school football group, that’s our biggest program. The second group is all of our remaining high school athletes, boys and girls, and then our last group is every athlete, seventh and eighth grade, and then we’ve got a few upper elementary kids that join us.”
Worley noted that in addition to getting all the players into shape and building up their conditioning, Summer Pride keeps the kids occupied and out of trouble during summer down time.
“I think, as a whole, speaking as the athletic director, our role in leading our programs, whether it’s the football program, basketball, baseball, softball, is to build from the ground up,” Worley said. “So getting our younger kids involved is a priority. We believe if you keep kids involved, it keeps them out of trouble and keeps them in the school building. There’s a lot of aspects to it. We’re trying to build programs, we’re trying to entice kids to be involved, we’re trying to help our school culture.”
Incoming senior Jentry Pendergrast, who plays football and also wrestles, is glad to be back on the field working out again. One of the key attractions for him is rejoining his teammates and enjoying the camaraderie of all of them training together.
“Getting in football shape, getting stronger, getting faster, all that stuff. We lift, we go outside, we run, do core stuff, work on mobility, flexibility,” Pendergrast said of Summer Pride. “It was good to have a break for a bit and then getting back into it. Being around all the guys is fun. We’ve grown together a lot, like a crazy amount.”
Pendergrast, who plays fullback on offense and middle linebacker on defense, noted that he has one particular day of Summer Pride that is his favorite.
“On Thursday, we have competition day and we all just duke it out and go have fun with it,” he said.
The notion of having all the athletes from different sports working out together helps foster a sense of community for them all. There are also a lot of multi-sport athletes that compete in different combinations of sports, so this gives them a chance to keep in contact with all of their coaches while working out.
“A school our size, in order for us to be successful at a high level, we have to have kids that play multiple sports, so we encourage multiple-sport athletes, either dual or all three seasons,” Worley said. “And really, by getting coaches carrying over from one sport to the next, and also athletes crossing over and being coached by both their coaches, or all three of their sets of coaches. We’ve got male and female coaches and every sport covered in our Summer Pride program.”
Kiefer baseball coach Sheldon Fairchild, who has numerous multi-sport athletes on his team, likes the setup with all the athletes working out together.
“We’re all kind of working out together, individually but together,” Fairchild said. “It’s running, getting faster, getting in shape and lifting weights. We’ve got a few that play football that also play baseball, we’ve got some that play football/basketball/baseball, we’ve got some that play on our baseball team that even wrestle. We all share athletes in one way or another. It’s kind of a neat thing.”
The Kiefer athletes will be at it all summer in this mode as they ramp up preparation for the fall sports seasons.
“We go for four weeks in June and three weeks in July,” Worley said of Summer Pride. “We gave everybody two weeks off as soon as school was out, give kids a chance to be kids and families to do things and then we got started. We’ll finish up the last three weeks in July, because of our mandatory dead period of the 9-10 days that surround the Fourth of July. Then for the most part, football will start a week after that, softball will start a week before we end Summer Pride. Some of our non-fall sports kids will have a break and then we start school up.”
