The Powell Panther Pride football camp drew in more than 60 campers at an earlier than usual camp in June, teaching elementary school through middle school students about the Powell Panther football program and showing them the importance of competitiveness throughout the week.

“Being at the beginning of the summer it was a lot easier on us to be done with kids camp in June, and not have to have something hanging over our head all summer waiting to finish up,” coach Chase Kistler said.

Kistler said he liked having the camp earlier in the summer this year, because it allowed for the team to hold their practices early in the morning before rolling into the kids’ camp in order to prepare for their team camp in South Dakota.

With this year’s edition of the Panthers, there is expected to be an influx of youth in the program, as a number of freshmen and sophomores were present to help coach the campers and make an impact on the next generation.

“We’re gonna be young next year,” Kistler said. “Our kids always do an amazing job working with those little kids. I think our players may at times enjoy it more than the little kids do.”

Throughout the camp, Kistler said  the high school players make a connection with those campers, bringing a strong relationship that he hopes carries over into the fall to give the Panthers a big fanbase on Friday nights.

“What we have seen with our kids running the camp, it creates kind of those relationships with our players,” Kistler said. “Then the young kids come to the games, and they’ve got their numbers on them and they’ve got the big heads and all that stuff. Caring for those kids that they met and got to know during the camp, it kind of creates a good little fan base for our players in the upcoming season.”

Throughout the camp Kistler said the players and staff preach a number of different things to the younger athletes, helping set them up for future success and become better athletes overall.

“We just say how important it is if you’re going to be a football player, we don’t want you to just be a football player, play all the sports you can while you can,” Kistler said. “That makes us better athletes all around. The big messages we send are sportsmanship, competing and being a multi-sport athlete.”

In addition to running the kids’ camp early in the summer next year, Kistler is looking to target more middle schoolers to attend the Panther camps, potentially also offering a position specific camp that will allow those older athletes to see what position they want to focus on before heading into high school.

“Our kids’ camp will still run the same way … But then maybe we will offer a one or two day position camp where those middle schoolers that really want to kind of start knowing what they want to try and be,” Kistler said. “Like they want to try and be a quarterback or want to be a running back, they can actually go to a more specific camp where it’s just technique based. Maybe we can pick up a little bit more middle schoolers doing that.”