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Miami Palmetto High School senior Jake Summer heads to Florida Atlantic University in the fall. He committed to FAU for academics but plans to try out for the football team as a walk on.
He had interest from other universities, including Arizona State, but he decided to stay closer to home.
“I’m super excited to play in college, the first time since sophomore year I’m not injured,” he says. “For football, I start in the spring. I’m going to be working with the team but I won’t be able to practice with them until the spring.”
Playing football in college has been his dream and it led to an unusual high school career path.
He started out playing wide receiver and running back for the Palmetto Panthers. Because the program was huge, he wasn’t seeing enough playing time. He played for two seasons and then transferred to True North Classical Academy for a season to play football.
At the start of his year at True North, he was playing at such a high level he was considered to be a potential First Team All Miami-Dade player.
“I got injured, and had to play all season with an injury,” he says. “If I played the whole season, I would have made All Dade.”
While he enjoyed playing there, he decided to transfer because the program was so small, the colleges weren’t going there to recruit players.
The opportunity presented itself for him to transfer to Killian High School to play football.
Although he again suffered from injuries, he did well enough that he had two-three offers from Division II and III schools.
It might have been more, except he suffered several injuries.
“The start of my junior year I had a partially torn labrum,” he says. “My next injury, my hip flexor was super tight. I couldn’t stride out and it was super painful.”
He also tore his left hamstring.
He’s now healthy due to physical therapy which has also helped build up his strength in his entire body.
When the season ended, he transferred back to Palmetto so he could graduate with the friends he grew up with at Coral Reef Elementary and Palmetto Middle School.
In college, Summer plans to major in sports business in hopes of becoming a sports agent in the future.
Summer managed to work in volunteer work, although it’s not easy for athletes. He worked with kids at the True North After School program from the middle of his junior year and continued to the end of program in late May.
“I’m working with grades K-2,” he says. “I’m one of the people who is outside. We throw the ball around, and maybe play flag football.”
He’d go on Wednesdays and Saturdays for more than two hours.
Summers also coached the younger kids in flag football.
When he was at True North and suffering from the hamstring injury, he mentored the freshmen and sophomore football players.
When he was at Killian, he volunteered for the Killian Drama program.
“I’d help out after school and set up designs for the shows,” he says.
This summer he’s going on a mission trip with Village Church to Honduras to provide fresh drinking water to local villages.
He was part of the youth leaders that taught the children under 18 about the Bible.
Until he goes away to college, he’s playing intermural flag football at Red Zone.
“They are looking to make flag football an Olympic sport in 2028,” he says. “A lot of the players are playing on the U.S. National Team.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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