ROSSVILLE, Kan. (KSNT) – You’ll find Rossville High’s Kaiden Brown playing linebacker and fullback Friday nights for the Dawgs, anyone who knows the program knows they always strive for more. For the senior, powerlifting is his side work, and his dedication and drive to that just brought him home a few world records.
Brown has always had a chip on his shoulder and this story started in 7th grade when lifting for football began
“I was one of the smaller kids, so I always thoughts that I needed to be stronger than everybody else, so I pushed myself there,” the Rossville senior saide turned that chip into hardware, but it didn’t come easy. Lifting and football are his passions, and he puts in the work for them every day.
“I’ll be at strength guild at 5:30 in the morning, and then have to be at the school at 7 to workout with Hammes and the football team, so I can be at school by 8, and then go through school, go to football practice after school and that’s just basically how my day is.”
When Rossville started its football season with a win over Centralia, it was just the beginning of a long 24 hours for brown and his dad. He had a powerlifting event the next morning in Columbus, Ohio, and he wasn’t going to be late.
“We left straight from Centralia, I fell asleep soon after getting in the car on the way there and then woke up for a little bit, watched some football on my phone from the night before, watching game film, and then fell asleep again,” Brown said.
The grind doesn’t stop, they got to Columbus 45 minutes before he was scheduled to lift, it became a mental battle
“I was really nervous because I hadn’t been to that big of a stage in my lifting career yet.”
He didn’t complete his first lift, it wasn’t too heavy, he just wasn’t concentrated and worried his legs were still tired from playing 12 hours earlier, but he wouldn’t be denied
“We didn’t drive up here for nothing, you know?”
By the end of the event, he’d set three new world records.
That’s my biggest thing is lifting is if I can beat my old records, I’m happy and it just so happens my records were so close the world records, so I just needed to push myself that much harder to break them and it was great.
And none of this would have been possible if he hadn’t learned that dog football mentality.
Everyone around me at Rossville is “ok that’s awesome, but how are you gonna improve?” we’re always pushing each other and I think without that then I wouldn’t be near as good as I am today.
So for all those records in his weight class, he squatted 457, deadlifted 451, and had an overall total of 1146, all world records. Plus he’s already a state champion here in Kansas. He hopes to lift and play football in college and he’s surely got the dedication to do it.
There is an excellent video of Kaiden at: KSNT Video of Kaiden Brown
