| |
|
|
|
Teaching the Art of Perseverance
 BRANDYWINE HUNDRED -- Montell Owens had one college football scholarship offer coming out of Concord High.
At the University of Maine, he never rushed for more than 800 yards in a season and barely cracked 1,000 for his career.
When his college career ended, he was the longest of long shots when he signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars as an undrafted free agent in April 2006.
Yet, Owens, the most unlikely of National Football League players, will begin his fifth season next week when training camp commences for the Jaguars, where he has made his mark as a versatile special teams standout -- he was a Pro Bowl alternate last season -- and with periodic duty at fullback.
"He's an overachiever and just a very special person," Concord coach George Kosanovich, Owens' biggest rooter, said Monday morning.
That made him the ideal front man for his inaugural one-day youth football camp, held, appropriately, at Concord. While more than 200 boys and girls, many from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Delaware, performed calisthenics, fitness activities and football drills and contests, Owens, 26, joined them.
He plopped his 5-foot-10, 225-pound self right down in the grass, soaked from a morning thunderstorm, on the field where he practiced as a Concord Raider. He did leg lifts, push-ups and sit-ups with the kids, smiling all the while in the stifling heat.
"We get to play football and learn exercises that you need to be a champion," 12-year-old Alex Alvarez of Wilmington said during a water break.
Campers wore white T-shirts that read "Youth Football Camp" with Owens' Jaguars number 24 inside the "O" in the word "youth." Beneath were the words "Build Character," which was Owens' primary mission in gathering the kids together, more so than finding the next NFL prospect.
"This is sort of something that was in my heart, to come back," said Owens, who was joined by former Maine teammates Ryan Bird, who runs similar camps up and down the East Coast, and Onyi Momah, Owens' personal trainer.
"I'd talked to 'Coach K' about doing this, but I always had something going on, like going back to school [finishing at Maine] or something going on with the Jags. This year, I made sure to set some time aside so we could get this done. A lot of guys in the league forget where they came from, and I don't want to do that."
(2 of 2)
Jaguars teammate Maurice Jones-Drew was slated to join Owens, but could not because of a family commitment.
Owens agreed that his unheralded background and repeated beating of the odds may present a more meaningful and, therefore, realistic lesson for the kids than someone who had been a superstar athlete through high school and college and seemed destined for NFL success.
"That's why the motto of this camp is 'Building character,'" Owens said. "I totally believe that the character attributes instilled in me by people such as Coach K and Dr. [Mark] Holodick (the Concord student-athlete who later became principal and is now Brandywine district superintendent) was really what helped me to achieve, helped me to go where I needed to go. I was also lucky enough to have both my parents [Ernie and Dawn] in the house.
"What we have today is a lethargic generation where they need to hear these messages. There's a lot of athletic talent out here, and they think their physical attributes are what's going to take them far. But their character is actually the cap on how far they can go, more so than how fast they run and how high they can jump. They need to place more emphasis on who they are and what they stand for. I went to school with a lot of kids here who were much better athletes than me."
At Concord, Owens excelled academically, lifted weights diligently, played the trumpet in the All-State band and stood out in indoor track and baseball, too. The foundation for a successful future, whether it led him to the NFL or not, was put down there, he said.
"Montell works hard," said Ernie Owens, an electrician. "He just has a tunnel vision. Once he sees the direction he's going, he goes right at it and accomplishes his goal. He's always been like that."
Ernie Owens remembered when Montell was a young boy, trying to learn to tie his shoelaces, how frustrated he became until he got them exactly right.
"He stayed with it," Ernie said, "because that's the way he is."
In a talk to the campers in the Concord auditorium before they went outside, Owens urged them to concentrate on constant effort. He then awarded an autographed football to 8-year-old Anthony Fortuna of Wilmington, a member of the Brandywine Warriors football team who had a Jaguars cap pulled low on his brow, because he demonstrated his determination by being the first to arrive.
On the way outside, Ny'mere Johnson shook Owens' hand and then proclaimed to fellow campers "I'm famous!" as a result.
Lineman Shawn Davis, one of many players from Concord's defending Flight A co-champion football team working the camp, described Owens as "a legend" whom Kosanovich and other coaches refer to frequently.
The legend, apparently, left an impression. Naquan Myatt and Anthony Stanley, each 13, won pass-catching competitions that, they learned, would earn them a Jaguars cap.
"It was great being able to test our skills," Myatt said.
"It was exciting to be here," Stanley chimed in.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
