Ask most high school students if they’d like to visit the Seattle Seahawks training facility, and step aside for the stampede. But for South Kitsap High School students who’ve set their hearts on sports medicine careers, such an opportunity could be the start of dreams coming true.
Thanks to a budding partnership between the Seahawks and the South Kitsap School District, on May 2 more than 20 high school students in Katie Finnie’s athletic medicine class will get to see firsthand what it’s like to be a professional athlete, coach and trainer. On the schedule are a Q & A session with Seahawks and Sounders staff members, visits with the Seahawks head trainer and a strength and conditioning coach and a tour of the indoor practice facility and weight room.
“This is the first of many programs where the Seahawks will interact with the students of our school district,” said Debbie Macomber, Port Orchard’s #1 New York Times bestselling author, who has fostered the partnership. “It’s all part of a plan to help our youth lay a foundation under their dreams,” Macomber explained. “To help them develop a game plan for success, to take a dream and turn it into goals.”
Macomber, her husband, Wayne, and their children have been long-time Seahawks fans.
Macomber’s younger daughter and brand manager, Adele LaCombe, serves as a liaison between the Seahawks and the South Kitsap School District. The idea for the athletic medicine class to visit the Seahawks training facility is one of many that materialized during a recent brainstorming session organized by LaCombe.
“My athletic medicine program is beyond excited to travel to the Virginia Mason Athletic Facility in Renton tomorrow and meet the Seahawks and medical staff, said Katie Finnie, head of Athletic Medicine for South Kitsap High School. “It will be so enlightening for students to see yet another facet of medicine and get to ask doctors, athletic trainers and strength coaches questions first-hand. We are looking forward to this and are deeply thankful for this opportunity.”
“The South Kitsap School District is thrilled and grateful for this partnership with the Seattle Seahawks,” said David LaRose, superintendent of the District. “We are honored that Debbie and Adele approached us with the opportunity and excited about other cooperative projects under development that, in effect, will make the Seahawks the students’ 12th Man as they develop their own game plan for success.”
