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Former Bishop Luers football teammates Michael Ledo and Anthony Spencer know what it takes to be great athletes. They both would say it is about strengthening the mind as well as the body. That’s why they are trying to influence young Fort Wayne athletes to increase their physical, mental and spiritual abilities.
Ledo co-founded Athletes With Purpose (AWP) with physical therapist Bryan Bourcier last summer, after training athletes for the past six years. Spencer, in his second season as a Dallas Cowboys linebacker, came aboard this year as an investor/role model.
“Our job is to help kids with performance enhancement, yes that’s one part of what we do,” said Ledo, who also played at Saint Francis. “But our biggest part is helping these young kids find their purpose in life. We are going to develop character in these kids so they have a solid foundation. There is more to life than playing sports.
“We are a trend-setter in Fort Wayne. We are bringing something to these kids that wasn’t here when I was playing or when Anthony was playing. We are trying to provide something that is the norm in Florida and California with this kind of level of training.”
Spencer, who was an All-American at Purdue, said giving back to the community is important.
“Just coming out here to give them some drills to do and help them during the offseason to make them better athletes and at the same time give them some responsibility and have good role models around is important.
“There is so much potential in Fort Wayne, athleticwise. It is about the decisions that kids make. That’s one of the biggest things I learned, especially during your high school years that mold you for the rest of your life.”
With exercise techniques from Bourcier, AWP puts 130 athletes at The Dome through training with things like core development, plyometrics, agility, speed and strength. Bourcier, a physical therapast at Indiana Physical Therapy, has worked with Spencer and ex-Elmhurst star and current Buffalo Bills wide receiver James Hardy.
“What we take pride in with this program is it is both physical and mental, and you can throw spiritual in there,” Bourcier said. “It is holistic, and we take pride in that. We can make you a great athlete, but that doesn’t mean anything if you are not a good person.
“A lot of this is taken when I was down in Tampa with guys training for the NFL combine and people are paying a lot of money for this kind of training, and we are bringing it back here to these kids for almost nothing.”
Participating in the program are Bishop Luers’ Tyquan Hammock and Lawrence Barnett, Bishop Dwenger’s Tyler Eifert and former Snider and Purdue player Aaron Lane, who recently was at the Miami Dolphins’ rookie mini-camp.
“People have been looking at this program and thinking it is strength and speed,” Barnett said. “It does that, but people don’t know it is a very Christian environment. All these players will benefit from it.”
AWP ( www.awpsports.org) has also put together a 7-on-7 football traveling squad that competes around the country just like an AAU basketball team.
“We are letting people know that Fort Wayne produces good athletes with good character,” Ledo said.
But it’s not just football players.
On one Thursday evening, there were basketball players such as Luers’ Troy Amos and soccer players such as Concordia’s Paige Goeglein and former Canterbury standout Aubrey Holle. There were about 10 female athletes training, going through the same workouts as the boys.
“When we first started, it was only football,” Bourcier said. “I trained Michael and Anthony for football, but we really needed to branch out. I have really pushed for ACL prevention for women. We take a lot of pride and focus with that with our female athletes. We want to keep growing and become more diverse.”
Dean Doerffler, Concordia football coach/athletic director, was at The Dome watching some of his football players benefit from the program as well as daughter Angie, a softball player.
“Part of the reason we had success (last year) was we stayed healthy,” Doerffler said of the Cadets’ football semistate appearance. “That is because of things like this (AWP), summer conditioning programs and things that we do are so important. Not so much to get faster and all that stuff, but to stay healthy.”
The program has grown from 70 kids last year at Homestead to about 130 this year at The Dome and has begun to include middle school athletes. The plan, maybe a dream, is to have a permanent facility one day.
“The possibilities are endless,” Bourcier said.
gjones@jg.net
