Football camp's lighter side

PALMER — Toughness and strategy aren’t just key attributes needed to become a successful football player. They’re also handy when it comes to trying to pull a towel away from someone.

As a way of breaking up the day-to-day monotony of football camp life, coaches running the All-Alaska Football Camp at Colony High this week staged a unique battle royale in which campers vied to earn the coveted title of top towel-puller.

“It shows toughness and grit and also a little strategy at the same time,” Palmer High head coach Rod Christensen said following the towel pull finals.

In what’s basically a three-person tug-of-war, three individual players each grip one end of a specially-designed three-way towel. Pulling against each other, each participant in Thursday’s event tried to reach a traffic cone set up just out of reach. With three football players pulling in different directions, a typical match in the event resembled a trio of dogs fighting over the same bone.

Coaches said a combination of athleticism and cunning is key. Last year’s winner caught the eye of college coaches during the event and eventually went on to play college ball.

Palmer lineman Keith Priestley made the three-man finals, going up against two campers from elsewhere in the state. With more than 300 excited players screaming encouragement, Priestly fell short of the title, losing out when an athlete from North Pole was the first to claw to his own cone.

“It’s kind of nerve wracking when you get into the big circle in front of everybody,” Priestley said.

Priestly said his strategy was to stay as low to the ground as possible during the event.

“And just pull as hard as you can,” he said.

Campers from 20 schools across Alaska attended this year’s camp, which included approximately 400 players, according to camp founder Randy Klingenmeyer. Klingenmeyer said the idea behind holding an event like the towel pull is that it enables players to use skills needed in football in a different kind of way.

“It puts these kids in a position where they really have to reach down inside,” he said.

Camp director Greg Horner, an assistant coach at Valley City State University in Valley City, North Dakota, said the event also enables coaches to set aside a block of time for more relaxed activity.

“It’s a lot of fun for the kids,” Horner said.

In its 16 years of existence, the camp has grown into the premier football camp in Alaska, with college coaches using it both as a chance to further the game but also get a look at Alaska players. Valley City has been among the biggest winners from the camp, with a bevy of Alaska players now on the team’s roster.

“This camp has been huge for our program,” Horner said.

While the recruiting angle is nice, Horner also noted that a side benefit of the camp has been that some Alaska-based players have now returned to the state — meaning Valley City coaches have access to alumni fishing guides. Former Valley City Vikings Brian Kirby and Jeff Baker are fishing guides, with Kirby guiding out of Homer for halibut and Baker working the Kenai River out of Soldotna.

“We’ve kinda got a little connection there,” he said.

Many high school teams from Alaska sent entire squads of players to this year’s camp. Palmer’s Keith Priestley said the mid-June even has become an annual way for players to begin thinking about the upcoming season, which gets underway at the beginning of August.

“This is really when the whole team starts getting back together,” he said.

Contact Matt Tunseth at 352-2265 or matt.tunseth@frontiersman.com