Wash High’s Adkins rare 4-sport standout
Washington’s Kurt Adkins is the Observer-Reporter’s Male Athlete of the Year.
Katie Roupe/Observer-Reporter Kurt Adkins is the Observer-Reporter’s Male Athlete of the Year. Adkins is involved in four sports at Wash High.
While his friends and teammates were eating chicken wings or hanging out, enjoying their final year of high school together, Washington’s Kurt Adkins couldn’t join them.
He was too busy running.
Or lifting weights.
Or drilling on the wrestling mat.
Or hitting baseballs.
Or studying.
When you play four sports, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for anything else.
And when you stand out in all four sports, you win accolades.
Adkins certainly did that. He was an all-area performer in both football and baseball. He won three medals at the PIAA track tournament and qualified for the Southwest Regional in wrestling.
For those performances, Adkins has been named the Observer-Reporter’s Boys Athlete of the Year.
All the hard work paid off for the Seton Hill football recruit.
“I’ve got to say, I think what gave me the edge over the other guys who were nominated had to be the fact that I played four sports,” Adkins said. “I definitely think that was something unique. That’s something that not many people around the state even, were able to do.”
In these days of specialization in one or even two sports, a four-sport athlete certainly is rare. And to be a standout in all four, well, that’s nearly unheard of.
“We’re lucky here at Wash High that we have a lot of kids who play more than one sport,” said Washington football coach Mike Bosnic. “I think it really shows in that they’re well-rounded athletes.
“But Kurt is a special athlete.”
On the football field, he was one of the area’s leading rushers, gaining 1,237 yards on just 97 carries for a gaudy 12.8 yards-per-attempt average despite sharing carries with fellow 1,000-yard rusher Jordan West.
Adkins batted .500 in baseball and was a defensive star in the outfield, while he finished 17-11 in wrestling, placing fifth in the WPIAL at 145 pounds.
On the track, he was the WPIAL Class AA champion in the 200-meter dash. He also qualified for the PIAA Championships in the 100 dash and 1,600 relay, bringing back medals in all three events after finishing sixth in both the 100 and 200 and fifth in the relay.
It wasn’t a bad year, especially considering he often had to leave a baseball practice or game and immediately head to a track workout with his father, Bob, himself a former standout athlete at Ringgold High School.
“A lot of nights, I would go to baseball practice after school, do a track workout after baseball and dive straight into homework,” Adkins said. “It was rough. There were nights when I wanted to go to wing night or go and hang out with my friends. I wasn’t able to. Those are the sacrifices that you have to make to be successful.”
Making a decision about which sport to play in college also wasn’t easy.
While he had taken up track during his junior year – thanks to some creative scheduling by baseball coach Rocky Plassio and track coach Teresa Booker – Adkins had participated in football, baseball and wrestling since he was old enough to lace up a pair of athletic shoes.
Bob Adkins, Dean of Admissions at Washington & Jefferson College, where he starred as a football player after a standout career at Ringgold, wanted his son to be a well-rounded athlete. He encouraged Kurt to play a lot of sports. But there was one exception.
“All the other sports, he asked me, ‘Do you want to play?’ I said yeah, obviously,” Kurt said. “For football, he told me, ‘Get your shoes on, you’re going to football practice.’ It was written in stone that I was playing football. Obviously, I’m really happy that he did that for me. Without all the years of practice, running laps for doing things wrong, I wouldn’t have learned everything I did.”
That first year of football had Kurt playing with kids two or three years older than him. His helmet didn’t fit right. His shoulder pads were too big. He looked like a bobblehead running around on the field.
“I had thigh pads on my knees,” he said with a chuckle.
But he loved every minute of it.
And playing with some of the Prexies’ future stars, including Shai McKenzie, got Adkins prepared for what he would face in high school. He was never the biggest player on the field, but he made up for that with toughness and natural ability.
“In high school, I had one of the toughest defenses to play against in practice and I was always the scout team running back,” Adkins said of his freshman year. “That definitely shaped me. I like to think I’m pretty tough and that had a lot to do with it.”
Not that he didn’t have some trying moments, especially managing his time.
That’s where his father again played a role in pushing his son to finish what he started when fatigue began to set in.
“I felt that way during track and baseball at one point,” Adkins said. “I came home from the County Coaches Meet and I had run four events that day – I had just started running the 4 x 400 relay. I was dead tired. My dad told me, ‘Get a good night’s rest because you’ve got baseball at 8 in the morning.’ I told him, ‘I don’t think I’m going to baseball.’ He said, ‘No. You’re going to baseball.'”
Because of that dedication, playing a sport in college might actually be easier for Adkins. He can focus on just one sport in addition to his academics.
“It’s going to be so different for me. I’ve never played just one sport,” Adkins said. “And also playing just one side of the ball will be different. It’s going to be a really new experience.
“I’m going to be playing in the slot and probably a sidecar position and returning kicks and punts, as well. I love to hit. I love it. It’s going to be tough not playing D. It’s going to be weird not staying on the field for the whole game. That’s what I’ve done the last two years. But I think it’s going to help me because I’ll be able to focus just on putting the ball in the end zone.”
And helping his team be successful.
That’s one thing Adkins has done a lot of at Washington. His desire to win is great. So too is his hatred of failure. But more than anything, Adkins was driven by one desire that made him a great teammate.
“It’s hard to prepare for something like this because there’s nothing else like it,” Adkins said of playing four sports. “To commit to four coaches in four different sports, you have to give 100 percent of your effort every time you’re out there, whether you’re on the mat, the football field, the track, everything. You can’t take any days off. You have to work every day because you can’t let your teammates down because that’s the worst feeling in the world.”