Training for the Trail: Former Obama Campaign Staffers Get Active

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ONE YEAR AGO, Obama campaign staffers stormed into Washington with grand plans to change the body politic. And they've succeeded — at least with the "body" part. After an eternity of 16-hour days and late-night food runs on the trail, the fresh faces moving into the nation's capital decided it was time to band together for another common cause: getting in shape.

Stephanie Spiers, who worked in seven states before becoming the deputy field director of Ohio, describes her months on the campaign as "the closest you can get to never sleeping, and living a completely sedentary lifestyle."

Now that she's a special assistant at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Spiers has done some community organizing of her own to put together a friendly pick-up basketball game at her Tenleytown office. "We play whenever people's schedules work out," she says. "It's a nice step away from the happy hour scene."

The boss' favorite form of exercise has clearly made an impact, judging from the number of other staffer pick-up basketball games across town — including the exclusive match-ups held at the Department of Interior and Sidwell Friends School. To score an invite, you pretty much have to work at the White House. (Sorry, Salahis.)

But there are other sports besides hoops. In the summer and fall, staffers from the White House and the Treasury met on Wednesday nights to play soccer in the field behind the Treasury Department, running around until after sunset.

Touch football games were held Sunday afternoons through the fall at McKinley Technology High School, typically bringing together 15 to 20 former campaign warriors. Some had never played football, but that didn't stop the "Yes, We Can" crowd from learning zone coverage and out routes. (Although, apparently, they could stand to learn from the prez's non-mudslinging ways — losing teams faced the prospect of a week of e-mail trash talk.)

For fellow DHS employee Justin Breighner, who went from being a soccer player at the University of Utah to an intern on Obama's data team, these games are a natural continuation of his adrenaline-fueled time in Chicago. "A campaign is kind of like being on a sports team," he says. "It makes sense to now work out and play sports together."

At least until the next presidential election.

Written by Express contributor Joel Censer
Photo by Pete Souza/White House via Getty Images