Allen Park — There’s a case to be made that football is not Detroit Lions draft pick Keith Abney’s best sport.
Abney, an Arizona State cornerback who was taken by the Lions in the fifth round of the NFL Draft on Saturday, was a four-time national champion inline speed skater as a kid.
He even created a personal website at 11 years old, keithabney.com, to promote his speed skating career. In his bio, he notes that he also enjoys playing football.
Abney hasn’t put on the skates “in a minute,” he said at the NFL Combine, but as he prepares to find a role on the Lions this upcoming spring and summer, he’ll still be carrying some of the skills that he developed as a kid.
“I got to say, just the endurance, long drives, teams like to (play with) tempo now. So being able to have that, my endurance, my lungs, I feel I can go for a long time, go to a high intensity for a long time,” Abney said Saturday, after landing in Detroit at pick No. 157.
“So, that’s going to help. And then the core, obviously, lower-body strength, all that.”
Abney got into speed skating through his grandmother, who ran a daycare and used to take him to field trips to the roller rink, he said. Once he realized he had a knack for the sport, he started racing competitively.
He set national records in the 200- and 300-meter indoor races and aimed to continue his career for the USA Junior World Team, but gave up skating to focus on football when rinks shut down at the start of the COVID pandemic.
“I feel like everything is going to help me be an elite cornerback in this league,” he said.
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit Lions draft pick Keith Abney was dominant roller skater
Reporting by Nolan Bianchi, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
