East Ridge head football coach Ashour Peera is passionate about showing his players what it will be like to compete and live at the next level in college.
After six months of planning and fundraising Peera is taking his team on a cross country road trip giving his team firsthand accounts of big division one schools and smaller programs to give his team the right tools to make the right college decisions when the time comes.
Now summer time practice is light and team meetings are casual but for the East Ridge football team early wake-up calls are on the horizon.
Head Coach Ashour Peera is taking his team on a 10-day college tour—a trip he has made a priority since joining the program back in 2014.
“Our goal is here that when you come in as a freshman and by the time you graduate you should have seen over 50-60 colleges,” Peera said of planning a trip that visits different colleges over the summer. “So this year because we visited Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and the Carolinas and been through there we decided this will be our biggest trip.”
Ten campus stops in 10 days for the Knights, mixing in football camps and sightseeing—giving the teens a true taste of life away from home.
“We learn about the rooms, the dorms, we go to camps—learn what the coaches really like and what they are really looking for,” senior lineman Elijah Rubin explained.
Now away from the field you can bet on some life lessons to take place, roommate battles, pranks -- and of course some cardinal rules to follow being away from mom and dad.
“Don’t leave the room past curfew,” senior wide receiver Tyree Baptiste said. “And you gotta get up on time or you are going to get left.”
Thursday morning the team took off from the school at 4:30 a.m.
A total of 36 players and seven coaches embarking on the adventure that has planned stops at Georgia State, Louisville, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio State, Pittsburg, Penn State, Maryland, Naval Academy and Charleston Southern before returning home to Clermont.