Former Foresthill star finds new avenue

The day comes in every athlete's life when they must walk away from the sport that has consumed them. Some walk away from sports completely, while others find ways to be competitive any way they can. Foresthill's Kiernan Hammer chose the latter. Hammer, a former standout running back who helped lead the Foresthill Wildfires to an 8-2 season in 2021 with 950 yards rushing and 15 touchdowns, spent last year as a member of the Sierra College football team. He didn't receive as much playing time as he hoped, and as the 2023 season approached, he started to discover football wasn't in his cards. "I tore my hamstring earlier in the spring and then I tweaked it again a little later," Hammer said. "So I wasn't given a ton of reps or opportunities while I was trying to heal." When it became apparent he wasn't going to get the opportunity he was seeking at Sierra, Hammer looked into transferring but found there were complications with his transcripts and getting units to transfer. Rather than continue his football career at another school, he pivoted into powerlifting. "I had always been lifting and I thought powerlifting actually complimented football very well," Hammer said. "You see these guys like Nick Chubb, Saquon Barkley, and Derrick Henry, they're squatting 500 or 600 pounds. I always kind of did powerlifting. I had a knack for it." It didn't take long for Hammer to decide he wanted to find a way to be competitive in powerlifting and he quickly found an avenue to compete, signing up for a competition in Chico on Nov. 4. "I always told my dad that if I have to step away from football, we should do a powerlifting or bodybuilding competition together," Hammer said. "My dad has definitely helped out with the mental aspect of it, and he is going to be very involved in helping train me for the future." Hammer went on to talk about how important it is to find an avenue that still allows him to compete and do something he loves. "I devoted so much of my life to competition and being an athlete and when you do that, you lose friends and you lose some girlfriends over it," Hammer said. "I told myself that I can't just give up on competing. So I just found a competition." Hammer has been all in on powerlifting for the last eight months and has been training for his competition. While he has been involved in powerlifting for a while, Hammer says there are challenges in his training he didn't anticipate. "I'd say the hardest thing about all of this is that it's a big mental thing," Hammer said. "I'll wake up on days and hobble to the bathroom because my hips hurt or whatever. I just make sure to keep pushing and know that I still gotta go and I still got to work out even when I'm mentally drained." Hammer has also faced challenges getting ready for the competition with his deadlift. Before his hamstring tear, he was able to deadlift more than 500 pounds but he saw a significant setback after his injury. "I had plateaued at around 405. I just lost so much strength in my leg with the injury," Hammer said. "I turned to doing a sumo deadlift to rehab it and that really helped." Hammer's rehab worked tremendously, and he is now deadlifting 525 pounds in the home stretch leading up to his competition. He's also bench pressing 335 pounds and approaching 500 pounds with his squat. "I'm not too proud of my squat, but the goal is to hit 500 by the comp just to make my ego happy," Hammer said. Hammer has lofty goals for himself. A true athlete at heart, he isn't satisfied with being anything short of the best and he plans to put himself in a position to take home hardware from Chico. "I want to walk out of there with as many of the records and the trophies I can get," Hammer said. "No matter what, it's going to be a learning experience and maybe things aren't gonna go according to plan, but the goal is to go in there, learn, be able to plan ahead for the next competition." Asked what his plan for the future is, Hammer said, "In a perfect world, I can keep doing this."