Ron Roberts Youth Football Camp will be starting back up again, giving second through eighth graders a chance to hone in on their football skills. 

The camp is on Tuesday, July 21 and Wednesday, July 22 from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Pre-registration cost 50 dollars while registration the day of is 100 dollars.

The full coaching staff will be present and working the camp, along with help from their graduate assistants and a handful of football players from the university’s team. 

While the coaches are determined to make the camp as fun as possible, they also will be striving to teach skills that campers can utilize in the future, such as speed and running technique, catching the ball, holding the ball, kicking it and proper tackling. 

The camp will start off with speed training with speed and strength coach Brandon Howard. During this session, campers will be learning the proper way to run and get faster doing so. The next few sessions will be geared to teach campers all positions of the game and fundamental skills.

“We hope after they come out of this camp, they have learned a couple things about how to play football and use them in the future,” said assistant coach Tyler Hennes.

According to Hennes, the camp is a good way to get the university more involved with the community and vice versa.

“We try to reach out to the whole community,” said Hennes. “For the youth camp, we do it because most of our coaches have kids and want to get them involved with us. We also want to get people in the stands, so if we have their kids wanting to come to a game, they will get more involved.” 

Youth camp not only focuses on the fundamentals of football but also on the qualities needed for both sports and life. The camp hopes to teach these qualities to the attending youths so they can use them in the future, whether it be for athletics or academics. Head Coach Ron Roberts will be helping accomplish this goal.

“He [Ron Roberts] will introduce our staff,” said Hennes. “He will talk about what he talks to our kids about, like staying focused, grades, things that they will learn by the time they get to high school, like leadership qualities, work ethic, things that we try to instill in them at a young age. Hopefully, we are instilling characteristics in them for not only athletics but for life in general.”

The football program also offers other camps in addition to the youth camp. Usually these camps are offered in June. These camps include three elite camps, which are for high school football players, two seven on seven camps and three specialist camps. The elite camps mainly focus on the individual player and learning their position more in depth. The seven on seven camps allow high school teams to compete against one another, while the specialist camps are meant for players on special teams.

For more information on the various camps and upcoming youth camp, visit www.ronrobertsfootballcamps.com.

 

The Lion’s Roar / Tamara Alexander
The Lions have two conference titles under their belt to go along with two FCS playoff appearances in the three years that Ron Roberts has been the head coach. Roberts was named the Southland Coach of the Year for the 2013 season, a season in which the Lions made their first ever FCS playoff appearance.