Submitted Photo Youngsville graduate and future Colts athletic trainer Kennedie Ebersole tends to a Presbyterian College football player.

The National Football League is adding an Eagle.

No, not a Philadelphia Eagle, but rather a Youngsville one.

Kennedie Ebersole, a 2013 Youngsville High School graduate, has accepted an internship with the Indianapolis Colts as an athletic trainer.

“I love getting paid to watch sports,” Ebersole joked. “But I have loved sports growing up and getting to help people while building connections is huge. I’ve always loved the medical field so now I get to watch football, which is my favorite sport, and help with injures and build connections with athletes. I love getting to see an athlete recover from an injury and make a comeback and blossom in their sport.”

Ebersole attended Penn State Behrend, where she graduated in 2015, followed by completing her master’s degree at Gannon University in 2020. After two years of working for Premier Physical Therapy in Delaware, Ebersole was ready to take her next step. In 2022, Ebersole sought out advice from a Colts athletic trainer on how to get into the NFL. She was told to seek out a Division I football position at the collegiate level to gain experience and then to begin applying for internships.

“I’m very determined, and a hard worker, and if you give me the formula, I’m going to apply it and go after it,” Ebersole said.

The future Colts intern joined Presbyterian College, a Division I school in South Carolina, where she started as an assistant athletic trainer with its football program only to take on the interim head football athletic trainer position half a year later. While at Presbyterian, Ebersole began the process of reaching out to NFL teams, with the Colts calling, interviewing and giving her the opportunity to live out her dream.

“I’m both, but more excited than anything,” Ebersole said when asked whether she was more nervous or excited about this next chapter. “I’m excited that this is a dream come true. I remember walking in my grad school first day and said, ‘I’m going to make it to the NFL one day,’ so I’m very excited. I’ve stayed determined and chased my dreams and now it’s coming true, but I’m obviously a little nervous for a big shift from collegiate to professional.”

Kennedie was not only driven by her passion for sports and sports medicine, but also by her late grandfather who always encouraged her to strive for her goals and honor his impact on her life.

“I think growing up, my grandpa, who I called Papa, believed in me wholeheartedly that I could do anything, and it really just set me up to go after what I want and determined to make him proud,” said Ebersole. “When he passed away in 2019, it just made me that much more determined to reach all my goals and dreams, because he would have pushed me to do it all if he was still here.”

While getting to live out her dream, Ebersole still feels athletic training is a profession that gets swept under the rug and that people don’t realize how vital athletic trainers are, highlighting the lives they save through CPR, heat illnesses treatment, and more.

“It’s hard to make a living in this profession, honestly, but working with my athletes makes it worth it.”