Justin Arndt keeps busy as firefighter, gym owner, football coach

After graduating from Fieldcrest High School in 2005, Justin Arndt attended Indian Valley Community College for one year before transferring to Illinois State University, where he played on the club hockey team.

After two years as a Redbird, Arndt took a year off from school before finishing at Eureka College, where he played defensive line on the football team.

In reality, firefighters are athletes. The difference between firefighters and athletes is athletes always know when game time is. ... We don’t know when our game time is. Whenever the bell rings, that’s when we go.”

—  Justin Arndt, firefighter and Fieldcrest football coach

During that time, he didn’t know what his plan was for a career.

But in 2010, he joined the volunteer fire department in Minonk.

“I wanted to try it and see how it went, see if I liked it,” Arndt said. “I really took a liking to the job and what it entails and thought it would be a good career for me. I’m the type of person who can’t sit around in an office. I like the unknown of the job. Every day is different. It’s never the same.”

Arndt began testing with different fire departments and was hired by Champaign in 2015. He went through a 12-week academy to train for the job.

He works in the downtown station, which handles all of the calls for the University of Illinois.

“The weekends it gets a little busier than weekdays,” said Arndt, who commutes a little over an hour. “On average, we see five to 10 calls per day.”

Arndt works for 48 hours and then is off for four days.

He also owns Knight Fitness in Minonk with his wife, Tessa, serves as an assistant coach for the Fieldcrest football team and runs the strength and conditioning program for the Knights football team.

“In those four days off, I’m usually at the gym, training the football team or working out myself or working since my wife and I own the gym,” Arndt said. “It’s never-ending.”

The Arndts opened Knight Fitness in February 2021. Justin Arndt helped a friend open a gym in Streator, and he and Tessa met in that gym.

“We’ve always been in a gym,” Justin Arndt said. “It dawned on us, why don’t we open a gym here because the Fieldcrest weight room isn’t the greatest. It was a kick in the right direction for us to open this place and give these student-athletes a nice facility to use. The advantage of having facilities like that is astronomical when it comes to athletics.

“I work with mainly the football team, and my wife works with more of the sports. Our biggest goal is to see all the sports at Fieldcrest doing well. If we can help them along the way, that’s a plus for us.”

Fieldcrest football coach Nick Meyer said the facility has been beneficial.

“It’s a really nice facility for the whole community to use,” Meyer said. “Our guys are up there almost year-round working out, even if they don’t have to be. It’s not like when I was younger, when you benched, you power cleaned, did some squats and deadlifts and got out of there. This is a lot more dynamic movements, dynamic stretching and useful movements that have helped keep us healthier.

“Every year they tweak our workouts. It’s always evolving. They’re so proactive about it. They’re so committed to our community and our football team.”

Arndt first got involved with Fieldcrest athletics through strength and conditioning, but then he started helping the football team. Last year, he became a full-time volunteer assistant, coaching the defensive line and helping out with the offensive line.

He said it seems like days fly by in the fall with work and coaching. Arndt makes sure he’s off on Fridays for games and for the two days per week the Knights lift in season.

Arndt makes practices as much as he can and said Meyer accommodates his schedule.

“Being a smaller school, we have 11 coaches on paper. Four of us are paid, and the rest are volunteers. They’re small-business owners, they’re farmers,” Meyer said. “As a firefighter, we know his schedule pretty far in advance. We do our best to say, ‘This is going to be a defensive day’ when he’s here. When he’s not there, he’s communicating with the kids about what film they should watch.

“He does a really good job with our linemen. He has a grit and toughness to him. He does our strength and conditioning pregame and at halftime. He’s very emotional in a good way. I’m pretty laid back and low key, and he’s fiery. He does a really good job for us, and we’re lucky to have him.”

Meyer said another benefit is having a first responder on the sideline.

“We don’t have a training staff. If somebody gets injured, he’s on top of it,” Meyer said. “We had a rough injury last year in Week 9. It was one of those injuries that everybody kind of runs away, but he was right there helping the kid out. He took control of the situation. It’s peace of mind for me as head coach that if something does happen, we have somebody who is really experienced.”

Arndt said his career as a firefighter helps him in coaching.

“I believe it helps,” Arndt said. “It’s discipline, which you always need in athletics and weightlifting. It’s attention to detail. As firefighters, we pay extreme attention to detail. That’s what we preach to the kids when we do our training. We make sure they’re doing their lifts with the correct form, making sure they’re not in a position where they’re going to hurt themselves. We try to help that translate to the season, where we’re trying to minimize injuries by making our bodies stronger and more resilient. In the fire service, we’re doing that every day as well.”

Arndt said his athletic career has helped him in his firefighting career as well.

“In reality, firefighters are athletes,” Arndt said. “The difference between firefighters and athletes is athletes always know when game time is. In the fire service, you never know when game time is. It’s a challenge to always be prepared. ... We like to think of ourselves as athletes in the sense that we keep fit, we try to keep strong and try to keep flexible.

“We don’t know when our game time is. Whenever the bell rings, that’s when we go.”