Ravenwood players and coaches, along with some team dads, worked the All Pro Dads day at the Titans practice facility the day after the Goodpasture game.

Weekly speakers inspire Raptors; team helps with flood, dads-kids day

By CAROL STUART
For Brentwood Home Page

Ravenwood High School football players are learning from role models and learning how to be role models themselves under the team’s character development program.

Former NFL and college players such as Super Bowl champion tight end Ernie Conwell (Rams/Saints) give inspirational speeches to players before each game in the non-mandatory program started last season.

Raptors players also have participated last month and in 2009 as the host team in the All Pro Dads event at the Titans practice facility.

In addition, the players worked at an RHS teacher’s home during the May floods – and ended up going over and assisting her neighbor who had no one to help.

“I see how the coach (Tom Shuman) is trying to get us to be more influential in the community and be a better role model to the people around us,” senior Joel Coles said about both facets of the program.

Ken Johnson, father of senior running back Alec Johnson, lines up the speakers and has headed up the RHS involvement both years in the All Pro Dads Day. Johnson said he volunteered when Shuman talked about starting the program when he took over as Raptors coach.

“We've seen some really great things in our men,” said Johnson, who works in the music industry. “We're planting seeds, and we'll see what happens either during their high school careers or beyond.

“It's all about just

Austin Haug (61) uses a blocking pad with the kids.

giving them something to think about and knowing that we can say something today and 15 years from now they can look back on this and help them make a good decision in life. And that's really the heart of this whole thing.”

For Friday’s Battle of the ’Woods against visiting rival Brentwood High, Ravenwood players got a chance to hear from Ben Utecht, former tight end for the Indianapolis Colts’ Super Bowl team. Utecht now lives in Williamson County and is helping coach Brentwood Academy’s sixth-grade team.

One of Coles’ favorite talks was by Freddie Scott II, a former Atlanta Falcon directly involved in former Colts coach Tony Dungy’sAll Pro Dads organization. Scott, a pastor at a Nashville church, wrote the book The Dad I Wish I Had and also has his own Unlocking the Champion program.

“It was about confidence and about how we must have confidence in ourselves as team to go out there and believe even though the odds are against us to go out there as a team and win,” Cole said.

“He just referred to a couple of scriptures in the Bible, and how they had confidence in the Bible. Even though they were outnumbered in certain situations, they still enough confidence to steal the other team's confidence and help to build their own confidence to win -- and how we could use that same example and take it to our football game and do good and be able to win with confidence and sportsmanship.”

Strength and power off the field

Coles said since RHS isn’t a private school that can offer a lot of Christian activities, he’s happy that Shuman – the school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes adviser – gives the team optional opportunities for inspirational messages.

“I think it's a great thing to do having chapel before our game, having a little Word and a speaker speak to us and giving us advice about what they did when they played their sport, how Christ affected his life and how is still affecting it right now,” he said.

“I think most of the players like doing that. It helps us during the game because some of the lessons can refer to us playing the game. … It’s really affecting players as a whole.”

Ken Johnson says the pre-game program has been attended by anywhere from 15 players to the entire team of 110. The team has also brought in Darrell Green, Hall of Fame cornerback from the Washington Redskins, for a special team gathering.

RB Alec Johnson (6) waits for a kid to run through a ladder in a drill.

Johnson then takes a hit.

Senior quarterback Keegan Leyrer has been a regular since the first speaker last year.

“I just really bought in to what he was talking about,” Leyrer said.  “I loved it. I go to it every time before the game.”

Although Bible passages are read and life lessons are discussed, Leyrer said it’s mostly based on football.

“They're really inspiring, they really teach you good lessons, and they get you motivated to go out and play the game,” the QB said.

The team responded to the floods by spending nine hours helping a Ravenwood teacher tear out “nasty flooded garbage,” Johnson said. Meanwhile, 20-something guy next door “obviously distraught” kept asking questions.

 

“We could have just packed up and gone home,” he said. “This guy had no family in town, nobody, and we just said, ‘Can we help you?’ And we went over and we completely gutted his downstairs that had been totally flooded, pulled his rent-a-car that was flooded out in his garage out. And these guys got to put their best foot forward and help people in need.”

Johnson gets choked up talking about how the players stepped up to help fathers and their children bond during the All Pro Dads days.

This year the event was earlier in the year so it had to be held earlier in the morning due to heat – meaning the players had to be downtown at 7 a.m. the morning after the Goodpasture game.

Ravenwood was asked last year to have 15-20 players in jerseys and 4 or 5 coaches, and twice as many showed up – along with fathers of players.

Leyrer said it was fun to see all the boys and girls throwing the football with their father. “I’ve thrown the football a lot with my dad growing up and I always enjoyed doing that. You see some kids that maybe don’t get to do that as much to go out there and do it at the Titans facility.”

The quarterback also enjoyed letting the kids run over him during one of the drills and having the kids look up to him and the other RHS players. “Random kids would just come up to you and give you a high-five and stuff. I know back when I was younger and I saw big high school football players it was cool.”

Said Coles: “It felt good to bring father and children together and see them happy. … It wasn't boring for us because it involved football.” 

Anderson Kay (31) gets knocked over at a drill during the All Pro Dads Father & Children Experience, while Connor Bennett (71) and Slade White (88) look on.