When the Prairie football team couldn’t go to camp this summer, the Falcons brought camp to Prairie.
The Falcons got an early jump on the 2023 high school football season by practicing at midnight early Wednesday, the first day that high school teams could practice for the season in Washington.
And while midnight practices have become an annual event at other schools like Ridgefield, Prairie’s event was created after a scheduling mix-up prevented the Falcons from attending a team camp in Eastern Oregon earlier this summer.
“When we couldn’t go to camp, the kids came up to me and asked if we could do a campout here,” Prairie coach Will Ephraim said. “So I made a few calls, and here we are.”
Prairie players arrived late Tuesday night and set up tents around the track at Prairie’s practice field. And at 12:01 a.m., the Falcons hit the field with excitement.
“I’m just so excited for my last year of football,” senior Pierson Lameh said. “I’m just trying to make the most of it and have fun.”
After some stretching and warmup exercises, practice was paused exactly 18 minutes as Ephraim gathered his players together.
“At exactly 12:19 a.m., on Aug. 16, 2005, this young man was born,” said Ephraim, who had his arms around Lameh. The Falcons then broke into a chorus of “Happy Birthday.”
“Last year was pretty close, but this is the first year I’ve practiced on my birthday,” Lameh said. “So that was pretty nice.”
Practice continued for another two hours with conditioning and non-contact drills. It was capped with players diving down a makeshift Slip-N-Slide on the turf.
“I know it’s late for a Slip-N-Slide, but here’s my thinking,” Ephraim said. “This is probably the closest these guys are going to get to taking a shower tonight.”
It addition of giving his players something special to kick off the season, the midnight practice also gave players cooler conditions for their first practice.
Temperatures hovered just under 80 degrees when practice started – significantly cooler than what other teams would experience for their first practice later Wednesday, as a fourth consecutive day of triple-digit temperatures was in the forecast.
After drying off and changing clothes, the Prairie players hit their tents for the 3:15 a.m. lights out. Lameh and a couple of teammates had other plans.
“Me and my buddies are going to sleep on the field,” he said. “Sleeping under the stars instead of sleeping in a tent.”
Ephraim planned to get his players up by 8 a.m. for breakfast, and then another light workout.
“I’m probably not getting any sleep tonight,” Ephraim said.
But it was all worth it, even on your birthday.
“It was pretty cool,” Lameh said. “I like the environment of it, just knowing it’s the first hour that we can practice together we are practicing together. So I like that. I just get random bursts of energy.”
