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Jason Baker says it often enough to make it absolutely certain that it’s not all him – that there are so many other football coaches and sponsors and volunteers who make this weekend’s Pro Football Mini Camps at Concordia and Wayne possible.
And he’s right about that, evidenced by the fact that we’re in the back seat of a volunteer driver’s white Volvo as it pulls into the Euell Wilson Community Center on Oxford Street.
Baker, wearing shorts and his football camp T-shirt that bears his name in small print, hops out of the car and gives the center’s founder, Shirley Wilson, a hug. She hugs him hard right back.
He apologizes that he doesn’t have much time, and after a few minutes wants to know where the kids are. She tells him they’re right around the corner, only a few blocks away. We can drive or walk. He says let’s walk.
“My dad grew up around here,” says Baker, the Carolina Panthers punter and Wayne High School graduate who celebrates his 31st birthday today.
Cracked and crumbling sidewalks tie together the line of houses that need paint and repair. Cars are parked along the shaded street and so is an empty beer bottle. A block-and-a-half away on the left side, two boys lug trash bags. A minute later, Baker wades through the tall grass and taller weeds of an empty lot being cleared of debris.
“I’ll bet you didn’t think you had to do this,” Baker says as he approaches a half-dozen boys, all of whom are wearing the same camp T-shirt as Baker. Some nod in agreement.
In the back right corner are three boys picking up leaves and trash. One of them, Alex Frankhouser, has an air cast on a left ankle he broke while on a trampoline. Baker talks to the boys for five minutes, poses for pictures, then heads back to the street, where a neighbor woman comes out to thank Baker.
“My husband’s been sick and hasn’t been able to get to this,” she said, looking at the lot that, by now, has been nearly picked clean. “This is going to be so much better.”
Back in the car, Baker brings up 12-year-old Alex.
“Can you believe that kid?” he says. “Out there with a broken leg and he’s doing this.”
“This” – and acts from other young workers – is the entry fee for Saturday’s and today’s camps. Some picked up a neighborhood vacant lot (Baker made sure to have the grass cut later). Nine more inside the Franciscan Center basement on Gaywood Drive were filling sacks with household items to be distributed later in the day. At least 50 more were working at the Associated Churches warehouse. In all, nearly 200 middle school students at 12 sites within the city paid their way into this weekend’s camp. And at each stop, Baker asked the young workers in the camp T-shirts, “You know why you’re here, don’t you?” And several of them chirped up with the right answer: “Community service.”
He told them that was right, and after they finished working, he assured them that football would fill up the rest of their weekend.
“This has nothing to do with scoring touchdowns or tackling anybody,” Baker said of the camp. “It has to do with off-the-field things. The bottom line is we’re trying to encourage participation, but along with that we’re trying to take the focus away from just winning and focus on the intangibles and the character traits that are taken from team sports.”
To Alex with the cast and those at the Franciscan Center and so many others who worked their way into camp, that fullness you guys may be feeling this weekend isn’t just from football. Which means Jason Baker was right all along. It’s not just him.
