As with any job, my day job coaching football at Penn State has some days that are better than others. In this job there are still other days that make you realize that your occupation is part of something special.
This past weekend we conducted two Fantasy Football Camps. Wednesday through Sunday we conducted the Men’s Penn State Football Fantasy Camp while Friday we conducted a Ladies’ Football Fantasy Camp.
The Fantasy Campers come to enjoy the camaraderie of others who share their love of Penn State football. They get to do fun things like practicing football, attending meetings, looking at game film, and learning some of the playbook. They get an up close and inside look at Penn State football.
The highlight of both camps comes in a chance to play a game on the field at Beaver Stadium.
But they don’t get to have all the fun.
Every time a camper has thanked us for the camp, I have told him or her how much the Fantasy Camp means to us.
These camps remind us that Penn State Football is so much bigger than just the student-athletes, coaches, staff and administrators that are all at work within our department.
Sometimes in the season’s daily grind you lose a sense of what else is around you. Sometimes in the game week preparations of practices and game plans you lose a sense of the magnitude of a Penn State game weekend. Sometimes you forget that Penn State football has been passed along from generation to generation forming a bond between parents and their children and their children’s children.
The fantasy camp brings these things home. Each night after dinner as we sit in the hospitality room I listen to their stories. I hear about sons who went with their fathers who now are fathers taking their sons to games. We learn about family game day rituals and traditions that they hold as sacred as our pre-game routines and traditions.
Last year after the camp I got an e-mail from one of our campers who attended games while growing up with his father who has since passed. He thinks about his father every time he enters the stadium gates. I know he thought of his father as he returned to play again in Beaver Stadium last Saturday.
One of the moments I look forward to all year is the pre-game meeting on Saturday morning. Before these campers put on that plain blue and white uniform and play on their field of dreams we bring them together.
We ask each camper to tell their teammates why they are here. They come from different backgrounds and most just met each other just sixty hours earlier. It is hard to describe the emotion of that meeting.
Yet in that short span they have come to trust each other enough to stand up and share something personal and share their emotions of the moment. They share the pain of losing a family member, or a life story that brought them to the camp.
This past Saturday a 67-year-old freshman from Warner Robins, Ga., got up to tell his story. Ronald had been kind of quiet most of the camp. That morning he talked about how much Penn State Football had meant to him through over 25 years in the Air Force.
But there was more. He talked about staying awake until two in the morning in the Philippines to listen to a Penn State game, and lying on his back in Okinawa to hear every word of another Penn State Football broadcast. He told us how years ago he drove from Omaha to Des Moines, Iowa so he could watch the Penn State-Iowa game on television.
But he had more to say:
‘I’ve smelled the exhaust of over 100 planes as they took off headed north into combat in Vietnam — and there is still nothing like the roar of 110,000 fans in that stadium on game day.’
There was not a guy in that room that didn’t have chills as Ronald spoke those words — not a one.
That 67-year-old freshman made plays from his safety position including a bone-jarring hit on a pass that prevented a completion. He won his team’s game ball to go along with our respect.
What an honor it was for us to have been blessed to coach a man like that and all the men and women in our camp. What a great reminder it was for us to be reminded that the game we coach has the ability to reach so many people in so many places — the vast majority of whom we will never get to know.
It is the reminder that we have an obligation to so many people to strive for success with honor — these people believe so strongly in that concept.
That is why I look forward to Fantasy Camp every year, because of the lessons we learn from the campers — and not the other way around.
