A Carolina Panther aims to ‘impact students through sports’ with new high school weight room

There were days when dozens of students crowded into the old weight room at Mallard Creek High School, creating a heat wave.

“It got so warm in that room that the sweat made the floor slippery,” recalled senior Addison Powell, who played tight end on the Maverick football team last fall.

“There were 70 of you trying to get in there,” Mallard Creek Principal Jared Thompson told Powell.

“It wasn’t very glamorous,” added senior Caleb Knight, who quarterbacked the Mavericks last season. “This is different.”

This is the new weight room, donated to the school by Carolina Panthers’ receiver Adam Thielen and his wife Caitlin, through the Thielen Foundation.

Ribbon-cutting ceremonies took place Monday afternoon in the spacious and well-equipped new room.

“I know you get asked to do a lot of things,” Mallard Creek head football coach Kennedy Tinsley told the Thielens. “But this will do a lot for our students. Sports have a special way of touching kids, and what you’ve done will touch a lot of our students.”

It was the eighth school that has received a new weight room — six in Minnesota, where the Thielens grew up, and two in Charlotte — from the Thielen Foundation. The foundation built a new weight room last year at Harding High.

“We are both athletes, and sports were vital in shaping us,” said Adam Thielen, whose wife was a college soccer player. “We got a lot of life lessons from our time in sports. Our foundation is trying to impact students through sports.”

Thielen said he and his wife have seen that the weight rooms help students improve self-confidence, by getting in better shape and improving their self-images. That, he said, also helps students treat each other better.

“At some of the other schools we helped, we heard stories afterwards from parents that their kids starting making their beds and helping clean the house,” Adam Thielen said. “Their behavior changed after the weight room projects.”

The Thielen Foundation does more than provide a new weight room. It also awards schools five $1,000 leadership scholarships annually for 10 years. Recipients are selected by school officials. And, with help from apparel manufacturer UNRL, the foundation presented about $5,000 worth of athletic clothing to Mallard Creek’s student-athletes.

Thompson said the school’s old weight room was so small that students were forced to train in two nearby hallways.

“This,” he said, pointing to the new facility, “is much safer for our students.”

Thielen said there was an extra connection between he and his wife and Mallard Creek High.

“We both attended Mankato State, and our nickname was the Mavericks,” he said.

“It’s cool to look up there and see that on the wall,” he said, pointing to a “Mavericks” insignia on the wall of the new weight room.

Knight and Powell are both seniors, and they said younger students at the school will benefit more from the new weight room.

“But you can be sure that we’ll get plenty of time in here before we graduate,” Powell said. “We’re looking forward to this.”

This story was originally published February 24, 2025 at 8:20 PM.