With the Vikings kicking off their preseason later today, I think it is safe to say that football is officially back! For the Pierre Governors, their season gets started on Monday, but there’s no pads, helmets or hitting involved. No, the Govs start with their annual ‘County Fair’ as named by head coach Steve Steele, in which they “enjoy” three days of bonding, camaraderie, and , of course, a lot of conditioning.
The Govs will all meet at their practice field Monday morning behind the high school, those who get there early will mingle and all speculate how hard this year’s County Fair is actually going to be. Once everyone, including the coaches, has arrived, the fun begins. The team will split up into position groups and run through multiple conditioning drills. Those drills include push-ups, sit-ups, hill runs, bag-pushes and many more. As someone who participated in last year’s County Fair, I can tell you that it is a lot of fun for the coaches, maybe not so much for the players. (Click here to see my first experience at the County Fair).
After the morning exercises conclude, the team will load into trucks and head out to Oahe Downstream, where they will spend a few days together setting up camp and getting to know each other a little better. That is after they run through more conditioning drills. Only those drills are not run by the coaches, but run by the South Dakota National Guard who has been happy to assist Steele with the drills the past few years.
As you heard in the interviews from my Day in the Life segment above, the players definitely find it tough, but they also have fun with their teammates while going through it. The Govs will kick off their regular season in search of their ninth-straight trip to the Dome on August 29th and 7:00 PM at Hollister Field against Aberdeen Central. We will have that game and all Govs football games on River 92.7 and streaming on www.DRGnews.com/River.
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