It’s been a very fruitful summer for Kennadi Fuhrman. This month, the De Soto High School senior received $125,000 in scholarship money for winning the girls’ competition in the Patriot Games in Geneva, Ohio.
The competition for 14- to 17-year-olds was put on by President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 group, a public-private entity organizing events this year to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.
Fuhrman said her school’s coaches nominated her to apply. She then submitted a video talking about what patriotism meant to her, wrote an essay, sent in a list of athletic and academic achievements and underwent a background check.
All of that happened in the space of three weeks, finishing just two and a half weeks before the competition started.
Fuhrman is no stranger to competition. She plays on both the De Soto High School soccer team and a club team, does powerlifting and is thinking about throwing a javelin in track and field this year.
“I think at the start, I kind of I wanted to do it for the experience, just to do something new. I think that I haven’t tried a lot of new things outside of soccer and powerlifting,” she said.
The Patriot Games started with a collection of different events such as a flexed arm hang, broad jump, 100-meter dash, hurdles, medicine ball throw and a pro agility shuttle run.
Athletes also ran through a military endurance course that included climbing under ropes and over a cargo net, jumping through tires and running over a balance beam in addition to other skills, all within a time limit.
After all that, Fuhrman ranked first. The next step was a tug of war and a pop-a-shot basketball game, where she dropped to third. To finish up, Fuhrman said she and the other top-four competitors went through the American Ninja Warrior course, which she found to be “insanely cool.”
The tough part for her was the mental aspect.
“I get in my head a lot, almost telling myself, ‘There’s no way I can do this.’ Before the semifinals, I was praying. God already knows what’s going to happen, so my anxiety needed to go down,” she said. “And then once I got to the final, I was like, ‘If I’m supposed to win, I’ll win, but if I’m not, that’s what’s going to happen.’”
For next year, Fuhrman said she already has “a very good scholarship” to the University of Central Missouri to play soccer. The prize money will help with any graduate school she wants to attend to achieve her career goal of being a collegiate strength coach.
De Soto High School girls soccer coach Jesse Smith said he watched Fuhrman’s entire competition via the ESPN streaming app.
“She’s so disciplined. She works extremely hard in everything that she does: the classroom, the weight room and on the soccer field,” Smith said. “Her preparation allows her to go out and just focus on the event and not worry so much about the results.”
