“4 Days of Pain” on the Dike

The summer is now over for high school football players in the state of Florida. The first day of football practice starts Monday August 11. Teams across the state have gathered the past several weeks to ramp up their conditioning for the start of the season.

 The two time defending 2B state champion Pahokee Blue Devils have their own unique conditioning program to prepare them for the season to come. “Four days of pain” is what senior running back Vincent Smith refers to the conditioning program as.

The four days Smith is talking about, are the four days the Blue Devils spend on the Lake Okeechobee dike in the blazing August sun right before the start of fall practice. The dike is about 30 yards high and is at a very steep incline. The Blue Devils run up it, they run down it, they run across it, they run around it. They back peddle up it, they bear crawl up it. You name the exercise and the Blue Devils are doing it up or down the dike.

“We make them do a lot of things on the dike, anything to tire them out,” said Head Coach Blaze Thompson.

Pahokee starts off the program with a 20 minute run around the dike. Following the initial run, the program is broken up in four quarters. Just like a football game, the fourth quarter being the most difficult. Between each quarter the Blue Devils get a break in the shade to cool off and hydrate. The shade and water is only a minor relief on a day that reached well into the 90’s.

“As you can see, it’s about 100 degrees and the coaches have no mercy,” said Smith

“The dike may be worse than boot camp, I don’t think any school in the country does what we do,” chimed in senior defensive end Brandin Hawthorne.

The coaches may come off as merciless, but look a little closer and you will find a group of men trying to push the Blue Devils to be as great as possible. “It’s going to be hotter than this on that turf in Miami” yelled one coach during the first quarter of the program, referring to Pahokee’s opening game verse Olive Branch (MS) at Traz Powell Stadium. Sometime during the second quarter an assistant question the teams will to win another state title or “the big gold ring with the #1 on it” as he referred to it as. The Blue Devils appeared to dig a little deeper and find another gear when running the dike after that comment.

“We know it can make us better, it did in the past so we are just going to keep at it,” said Smith.

As the workout was winding down to an end another assistant let the Blue Devils know, “Don’t worry it won’t be this hot in December.”

If the Blue Devils are able to add a new piece of jewelry to their collection on a cool December day in Orlando, this past week on the dike will be more than worth it to the players.