By John Raffel
Correspondent
CLARE — Youngsters who love football beat the heat this week at Clare’s football field for the Legends Football Camp, featuring Jeff Chadwick and other Detroit Lions alums.
Kristen Blackburn, a co-founder of the camp along with Chadwick, noted the camp is a fund-raiser for the JC Youth Foundation.
“Each year, we bring in former NFL players and they primarily coach the kids at different positions, or a kid has an opportunity to do that at each positions. We do it for three days,” Blackburn
Youngsters ages 7 to 9 were at the camp on Tuesday, ages 9 to 11 on Wednesday and ages 11 to14 on Wednesday.
Six local area high school, football teams, including Clare, engaged in a 7-on-7 passing camp on Thursday (July 15). Roscommon, Reed City, Beal City, Gladwin and Mount Pleasant were also there.
Former Lions in attendance included Lomas Brown, Corey Schlesinger, Scott Conover, Jimmy Williams, Eric Stokes, Jitter Fields, Bruce McNorton, James Farrell and Chadwick.
Youngsters enjoyed being at the camp.
“I like it that we get to find out our positions and find out what we’re best at,” Trenton Wale of Clare said.
“I like everything about it,” Dixie Lynn Cook, of Clare said.
Chadwick said it was the fifth year of the camp. He’s been in the Clare area for several years and bought a place in Beal City a couple of years ago. He’s now retired.
“This frees me and Kristen to work on this camp,” Chadwick said. “It’s important to me an my teammates that we go out there. We can’t take the information with us.”
Chadwick said what’s especially rewarding is “being able to share with the kids our knowledge and coach them where in cases there are not being truly coached in a position. Coaching doesn’t mean just explaining something to a kid, its working them through the thought process. Every play, it’s constantly coaching the play until they get it.
“The reason I have these (former pro) players is they’ve had multiple coaches throughout their career. They actually had to implement what the coaches are telling them. To be at the highest level, you have to be really good at what you do. Theyve had a lot of different coaches explain very similar ideas to make them successful. They take those ideas, thoughts and knowledge and share it with these youngsters who wouldn’t normally get that. That’s the best thing I can say about this particular camp.
