EXETER TWP., Pa. – Speed is a centerpiece of arena football, and tryouts are now underway for the new team that will call Reading home.<\/p>\n
“Everything is so much quicker. The angles are so much tighter,” said Head Coach Lee Johnson.<\/p>\n
The team already has a former DI College Player, Jalen Green, who played under National Champion winning coach Kurt Cignetti.<\/p>\n
“The most important thing I learned from Coach Cig had to be how to handle yourself day to day,” said Green with the Pennsylvania Benjamins. “Especially in the middle of success. You never want to be too high or too low.”<\/p>\n
He’s hoping to see some local and regional talent earn a coveted spot on the final roster which will be released on April 10th.<\/p>\n
“Create that winning culture. try to bring that to Reading for the fans. Give them some great entertainment, but also, win ball games,” Green added.<\/p>\n
The Benjamins’ head coach established a serious tone for the tryouts as athletes took their shot at making the team.<\/p>\n
“The more local talent that you have, the better off you’re going to be because there’s vested interest,” Johnson said.<\/p>\n
I participated in the drills today and found them to be physically taxing, giving keen insight and unique perspective into what these athletes are putting their bodies through in the 40-yard dash, shuttle drills and one-on-ones.<\/p>\n
“I had two guys on that one team that went right to the NFL,” Johnson recalled.<\/p>\n
The athletes are giving all they have in the hopes of becoming a pro arena football player.<\/p>\n
“If you have a chance to play and you do well, eyes will be on you,” added Johnson.<\/p>\n
The team’s inaugural season is slated to start in April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXETER TWP., Pa. – Speed is a centerpiece of arena football, and tryouts are now underway for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[303,61922,4849,28,61923,61921,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-133938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-football","tag-jalen-green","tag-national-football-league","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-benjamins","tag-pro-arena-football-player","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}