From basic training to football practice

Dave Thul sends us a link to his hometown paper, the Owatonna Free Press, which welcomes back some seniors from their summer vacation at basic training;

“You come to football and practice for two hours, and maybe condition for 20 minutes,” Shaw said. “But in basic we’d be up at 4:30 a.m. to go do (physical training) for and hour-and-a-half, and it was constant.”

Rygalski was a bit more blunt in his assessment of conditioning.

“I don’t really feel challenged,” Rygalski said.

Some coaches might take those words as a challenge, but Tigers coach Jerome Johannes knew he wouldn’t have to do a thing.

“They did that themselves,” Johannes said of giving the soldiers a more intense training regimen. “One of the things they learned was giving everything 100 percent because if they did anything less, they probably had someone screaming in their face.”

I’d like to personally welcome Matt Gengler, Chris Rygalski and Derek Shaw to our ranks. Gengler said he enlisted to spend time with his father who is currently deployed to Kuwait. I also commend the coach for allowing these fine gentlemen to start the football season two weeks late as opposed to the boneheads in Illinois we read about last month.

Category: Military issues