Fun, fundamentals and plenty of hard work:
Eastbay-sponsored Robert Brooks Football Camp a success

By: W. Keith Roerdink
Eastbay Online

It's a common denominator that's run through Robert Brooks' life. It transformed him from a skinny kid from South Carolina into a top-flight receiver in the National Football League. He battled back from a grisly career-threatening knee injury with mega-doses of it. And when back surgery cut his 1998 training camp short, his commitment to it got him ready to suit up for the Green Bay Packers' season opener.

That said, you can imagine what the Robert Brooks Football Camp is like. It's a working football camp. Hard working. You can hear it in the huffing and puffing of young lungs, smell it in a breeze not quite strong enough to bring comfort and see it on the flushed, sweaty faces of campgoers.

Are kids interested in competing on the next level? They'd better be. This camp is an excellent primer on what to expect, because it's a reflection of Brooks' own work ethic.

It's late July and a dry northeast wind attempts to bring some comfort to some campers lying flat on their backs in the crabgrass on the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay campus. This particular group is in their early teens and numbers nearly 50. They're part of a larger group of 1,300 campers aged 8 to 18 and right now Conditioning 101 is in session. The breeze provides little relief. And stalking between the rigidly segmented rows of sun-blinded bodies is the man who provides even less, Darryl Payne.

"Oh momma, why'd you send me here? I thought we'd be shooting hoops, I thought we'd be swimming."

That's Payne. Payne as in pain. He played guard with the Houston Oilers from 1979 to 1982, and is now the coach of Worthing High School in Houston, Texas. He runs his session of the Eastbay-sponsored camp with the intensity of an Army drill instructor.

Payne has his campers run through a variety of physical fitness tests. One involves the campers holding a thin, three foot long, hollow tube above their heads as they laid on their back and held their legs six inches above the ground. Payne would begin to count and if one camper faltered, he would start the entire drill over. Hey, it's like the pros- one player doesn't get penalized for five yards. The whole team does.

Payne also peppers the field with the trieds-and-trues, such as:

• Football games are won September through December, but championships are won January through July.
• You want fame? You want glory? It's gonna cost.
• Football is about speed. You either got it or you're chasing it.

But one phrase Payne is emphatic about getting across is "Yes, I can."

"I always tell those guys no matter where you go or what you do, all you have to do is keep saying, 'Yes, I can.' And it will happen for you," says Payne, who played collegiately at Division III Bishop College in Dallas. "I wasn't the greatest player, I wasn't the fastest player but every time I'd go up against a guy I'd look him in the eye and tell him, 'Yes, I can.' I wasn't going to be denied."

Brooks walks from session to session, sometimes taking part, other times providing encouragement- always overseeing.

He never had the chance to be part of something like this as a young boy. His parents couldn't afford it. That explains the gleam in his eye when he talks about running his very own camp.

"This is hard work, but I tell them to never give up and I try to stress the importance of knowing how to treat each other and how to get along with your coaches and teammates," Brooks says. "This camp helps remind me what it was like when I started playing football at age 6. It's really going great- for them and for me."

Joined by receiving mate Derrick Mayes and linebacker George Koonce, Brooks gravitates towards Payne's group and proceeds to fire up the troops.

"C'mon, you can do it," he shouts to the campers, who are shaking with fatigue under a blistering sun and 90-degree temperatures. "Give your teammates encouragement. You do this as a team. It's about teamwork. Let's hear it."

Payne cuts back in.

"If your back gets tight and your legs get tight and that little man says you can't do it, you say, 'Yes, I can.' Now can you do five more?"

The campers scream, 'Yes, I can.'

"It's tough, but that's what I like about it," says camper Parker Kilsdonk, a 10-year old future lineman from Appleton, Wis. "Coach Payne was tough because we have to hold a pole up in the air on our backs and lift our feet up. But he does it to make us better."

"The No. 1 thing about this camp is it's a working football camp and we work on the skills they may not normally work on in their schools," Payne says. "We don't try to change anything, but all we tell them is it's about hard work. Champions do the little things that other people don't want to do. That's what we do here. We get them fired up and get them motivated. As a matter of fact, I coach because I don't want a real job. I enjoy coaching these kids and I enjoy being at the Robert Brooks football camp."

While Payne gives the campers a physical workout to remember, Coach Roy Wittke, offensive coordinator for Eastern Illinois, is one of dozens of college coaches putting campers' minds in motion, running the gamut from fun to fundamentals. For two sessions a day, Wittke conducts a football basics seminar for the younger campers.

"We realize this may be their first exposure to organized football," Wittke says. "Not only do we want to be able to help them develop some physical skills, but we want to take them through some of the basics about the different positions and what each one is responsible for so they can continue to watch football and know a little more about what's going on. We try to make it as fun as possible for them."

Jim Knowles, the defensive line coach at Western Michigan agrees.

"The first thing you're trying to get across to them is how to be coached," he says. "For the younger kids, they're just trying to learn how to focus. You're going to try to work basic fundamental techniques but you're also going to try to teach them how to become a football player and be coachable."

There's also plenty to pass on for the junior high and high-school-aged camper.

"With the older kids, the focus is primarily on physical skills and fundamentals," Wittke says. "We hand out a sheet, a position skills guide to every one of our coaches that comes in and it lists eight or nine specific skills at each position that we want to make sure they teach or spend time on instructing them on while the kids are here. This gives us a chance to guide them and make sure that all the kids that come to our camp are being exposed to the basic skills of every position."

And for those who show a mastery of the fundamentals along with the desire to play at the next level, there is the chance to be evaluated by the college coaches.

"On the last afternoon of camp, we separate the senior high kids out and they have a chance to work directly with the college coaches on each side of the ball," Wittke says. "Our college coaches are given a list of names of all the juniors and seniors here and we've got quite a lengthy list of kids that have come out of this camp and earned scholarships at Division I, AA or 2 programs.

"We're awfully proud of that because we'd like to think some of those kids may have been exposed to someone at camp who worked with them and that type of evaluation and interaction is extremely valuable in the recruiting process."

Knowles may wind up being one of those "someones." He passed on some pass-rushing tips to several beefy high schoolers who showed promise during the camp:

• Most guys will get down in their stance and just rush and try to get to the quarterback. "Really, they should be thinking about what's their favorite move and how can they use that one move," Knowles says. "Before the ball's even snapped, they need to know what they're going to do. Most guys don't even think about that before the play and some may not know down and distance."

• In pass situations, change your stance. "If it's third and long, it's a pass, so get into more of a sprinter's stance and go after the quarterback," he says. "Have a move in mind, have a game plan. Most guys aren't strong enough to bull rush. Most guys need to do a foot fake or a swim or rip, something like that. But they have to think about it. If you don't, you're stuck and then your just reacting."

But regardless of the position, much was taken away from the camp.

"I learned a lot. Like, for defensive backs, they show you the proper stance and how to drop back properly and how to cover your area if you're a safety," says 13-year old Michael Mignone of Washington, D.C. "This is my first camp and I like it. It's been pretty fun."

And the chance to rub elbows with some of the top names in the game doesn't hurt either- like the day the Minister of Defense made a visit.

"When Reggie White came out... I've been a lot of places for these camps, I've been in Dallas when Emmitt Smith was there at the peak of his career... but I have never seen things come to a stop and the kind of reception that he got," Wittke says.

"And he and Robert interact afterwards, that's the neat thing here. You see the different players and they truly and genuinely, I think, have a great relationship. I think a lot of it is because Robert is very respected. (Nose tackle) Gil Brown was here and (fullback) William Henderson, he was out of the country this year, but last year he was here and he'd just sit in the bleachers before stretching and talk with the kids. He'd play quarterback for their 7-on-7 games. (Guard) Adam Timmerman did that last night and you'd see that they genuinely have fun playing with the kids. There's a lot of places you'd go where you don't see that type of thing. It's a neat place."

And the kind of place aspiring football players want to be at. At least the players who know that the best things in life come from hard work.