Seven Princeton athletes celebrated on signing day

Seven athletes from Princeton High School were celebrated with a special signing ceremony to commemorate their future college plans Tuesday evening at Prouty Gym.

The group signing ceremony, the first held by PHS, was attended by friends, family and teammates, conducted by Athletic Director Jeff Ohlson.

Zoey Byers will play tennis at IVCC. She chose IVCC to be closer to home one more year. She already has several credits already through dual credit classes and the classes she has been taking since last summer. She plans to study Elementary Education.

Arthur Burden will attend Aurora University to play football. He said he was sold on Aurora by head coach Don Beebe, who had a distinguished NFL career and was a Super Bowl hero for the Buffalo Bills.

“I like Don Beebe and his style of coaching. The program is coming up and I think they have a shot at a title,” Burden said.

Kelsea Klingenberg, who had two RBIs Tuesday afternoon in Princeton’s 8-2 softball win over Newman, will continue to play softball at Parkland College. She initially planned to attend Palmer School of Chiropractic, but then looked into schools that offered a competitive Kinesiology program and found Parkland.

“I decided to attend Parkland because of their competitive softball program and family culture,” she said.

Cade Odell will play football at Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa. Defenders head coach Joel Penner was a college teammate and close friend of Odell’s dad, Curtis, at Trinity International University. Odell plans to study secondary education, especially history, and wants to coach and teach at the high school level.

“I just found Dordt to fill all of my boxes of what a college I wanted to be a part of. I loved the Christian environment and the schooling and football is top notch as well,” he said.

Jordan Reinhardt will join Burden on the Aurora campus to play baseball for the Spartans, following in his brother Josh’s footsteps. He plans to study Sports Management.

“I got to grow up watching my brother Josh play there so being at most of the games just made me love the way they ran the games and stuff. The coaches also showed tons of interest which made it even an easier choice,” he said.

Chase Sims, who walked off the tennis courts to attend the signing, will continue his soccer career at Monmouth College and major in Business Administration and a minor in Accounting.

“My main goal for the school I chose was to be able to keep playing soccer and find a community that I would be able to fit in while getting a good education,” he said. “Among other schools that I looked into, Monmouth was one that could give me both a great soccer experience and has a great business program.”

Sam Woolley will attend Judson University in Elgin to play softball. She is going into physical therapy with her major focusing around Exercise Science.

“Judson was my choice because it focuses a lot on faith and that’s something I am huge on,” she said. “As soon as I stepped on campus I knew it was the school for me. I absolutely love what it has to offer and my coaches there are amazing.”