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Who are the first Penn State winter workout winners of 2025?

Greg Pickelby:Greg Pickel•about 9 hours•

GregPickel

penn-state-football-weight-room-generic-feb-28
The weight plates inside the Nittany Lions' weigh room.

Winter workouts are officially underway at Penn State. That, of course, means the first staff shoutouts are in for 2025. For those who might be unaware, after each morning conditioning session, each position coach will tweet out who he thought had the best day. Many times, it will focus on leadership. However, in other instances, it will be simply related to physical performance or overcoming some sort of obstacle during the day.

Here are the picks for Tue., Feb. 25:

Quarterback: Drew Allar

Running back: Quinton Martin

Wide receiver: Kyron Hudson

Tight end: Joey Schlaffer

Offensive line: Tackle Drew Shelton

Defensive line: End Zuriah Fisher

Linebacker: Kari Jackson

Cornerback: Cornerback Elliot Washington II

Safety: Zakee Wheatley

Specialists: Punter Riley Thompson

Notes: It’s a positive sign for Fisher that he is back in action for the first winter workouts. Transfer Hudson winning the first receiver award will turn heads. And, as expected, analyst and de-facto linebackers coach Dan Connor made the pick for his position.

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What’s a winter workout like at Penn State?

Back in 2023, now-former Penn State quarterback Beau Pribula explained what a winter workout is like in State College.

“I feel sometimes people hear winter workouts, and they just think we’re lifting weights or whatever,” he said at the time. “We do certain drills where, where’s probably five stations, and it’s just nonstop. We’ll go around each station and we’ll do certain agility [drills] like a shuttle [run], we’ll do sprints with [pulling] sleds on our back. We’ll do sprints with [heavy] water bags.

“And then at the end, we’ll do competition periods. We go against somebody and you do your sled pushes for a certain amount of yards and it’s a race. You’ve probably seen pictures of the tire pulls of different guys doing the tire pulls against each other. It’s just a competitive environment. It’s just made to make you mentally tough and physically tough, and it’s good and it’s fun.”

Earlier this year, Penn State second-year defensive tackle Xavier Gilliam discussed the team’s approach to winter workouts.

“Not really working on anything in winter workouts but really competing,” he said. “I want to really showcase my competitiveness. I feel like I showcased it a little bit last summer, during summer workouts, but I feel like it needs to come alive in the winter.”

Complete coverage of Penn State’s busy Monday

If you missed any of Blue-White Illustrated’s reporting on Monday’s news conferences with Pat Kraft and Stan Drayton, find our complete coverage below:

Penn State AD Pat Kraft updates football progress, NIL, more

Why Penn State, and why return to coaching now, for Stan Drayton?: ‘I just had to get back into it’

What will the Beaver Stadium capacity be in 2025? Penn State AD Pat Kraft talks that, temp seating, renovations, and more

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