Ms. Kelly Pirkl is a physical education teacher at Owatonna High School. Pirkl has been teaching now for 22 years. She has taught introduction to P.E, personal fitness, lifetime activities, total body fitness, aerobics and girls strength training. Out of the classes that she has taught, her favorite class to teach has been aerobics, which is now called total body fitness. She also liked to teach lifetime activities as well. Although Pirkl is teaching all of these different classes, her favorite units to teach were biking, curling and cross country skiing. 

In Pirkl’s high school days, she was involved in so many different sport activities. When she was in high school she was a part of the groundbreaking women’s sports. With being so involved in sports in high school Pirkl said, “I was like, what else would I need to do to become a P.E. teacher, and honestly there were people that gave me a hard time with some of it.” While being at OHS, Pirkl has had many favorite memories such as taking canoeing trips, skiing trips and other events that have taken place away from the building where she was able to see students do things that they had not experienced before. 

The biggest thing that she has learned while teaching is, “You have your athletes, you have your non- athletes, you have kids that are great students and kids that are not that are all important and have amazing things going on in their lives and better just the whole spectrum of personalities and interests.” Some things that Pirkl has been involved in at OHS are being a mentor, helping with girls cross country as the assistant coach, kids’ first leader and helping out during track meets.

After Pirkl has put in many years at OHS she has decided for her years to come to a close. She decided to retire and focus on her grandchildren. As she already has five and another on the way she looks forward to helping out with them and spending more time with them. She also looks forward to spending more time outdoors by doing activities such playing golf or biking. She also hopes to travel around more as she will have more time to. Senior Grace Wolfe said,  “It is very sad to see that Mrs. Pirkl is retiring because she is a teacher that always makes class fun. Although I’ve only had her for one class, I know she’s left a big impact on all the students she has had. She will be missed here at OHS.”