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Vikings receiver Adam Thielen helps give Humboldt High School an impressive makeover

dane mizutani, pioneer press
·3 min read

As priceless as the smiles were Tuesday at Humboldt High School in St. Paul, the speeches are what’s going to stick with Vikings star Adam Thielen.

In the middle of the newly renovated weight room funded by the Thielen Foundation, a handful of student-athletes shared their personal experiences before senior quarterback Jorge Irizarry delivered the most powerful message of them all.

“It’s such a great thing for this community,” he said. “We ain’t never had nothing this nice before.”

This is precisely why Thielen continues to give back on a regular basis.

He and his wife Caitlin started their foundation in 2018 with the goal of reaching out to underserved youth across the state and empowering kids to reach their full potential.

“We knew we wanted to give back to the areas that need it most,” Thielen said Tuesday. “We wanted to focus on the areas that haven’t gotten a lot of attention, so when we hear things like we did today, it makes us want to give to more places like this that need that support.”

The project at Humboldt took about a year from the initial planning stages, according to athletics director Matt Osborne, with construction starting last fall and then the weight room going fully functional this summer.

“This is a great improvement,” Irizarry said. “I remember the weight room from before had rust on all the equipment and stuff like that. It was pretty bad. As soon as I came in here for the summer workouts, I was like, ‘Dang. What happened?’ I was in shock.”

That shock factor is undeniable when walking around the weight room itself.

There are a couple of accent walls emblazoned with the school colors of orange and black, various inspirational quotes that give the space some character and, most importantly, state-of-the-art equipment curated by ETS Performance, where Thielen trains in the offseason.

All of it is by design.

“We wanted to make it feel very similar to where I train,” Thielen said. “You can see the paint and the logos and the verbiage that’s around here. It’s very specific because we feel like if these kids come in and they are excited about being here, they are going to put a little bit more effort in, and that’s going to help on the field and in the classroom.”

As far as Osborne is concerned, the newly renovated weight room goes beyond simply giving student-athletes a place to work out.

“I think when they walk in here, they understand that someone cares about them,” Osborne said. “None of this would’ve been possible without the generosity of the Thielen Foundation. It’s so amazing that someone was willing to donate as much as they did. We aren’t used to something like this.”

Because this stuff doesn’t usually happen to Humboldt High School.

“He could’ve picked anywhere and he picked us,” Irizarry said. “It means lot.”

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