COLUMN: Kids get spotlight at camp before Southeast Missouri State spring game

Southeast Missouri State senior running back Lennies McFerren bent slightly at the knees and stared into the eyes of his teammate.

He shook his arms a little at the side, as if getting loose for the next play, and delivered a motivational message as the teammate mimicked his actions.

"I was just telling them you can't fear anybody," McFerren said. "It doesn't matter how big they are, you just run right through them. As long as you have heart you can be unstoppable, you can be anything in life.

"Got them going, get them prepared to do whatever. That's what coach Tuke tells us."

His teammate took a handoff, raced up the middle of the field, knocked over a defender with uncanny force and a few moments later was celebrating a touchdown with a dance style rarely seen.

Watching this scene play out once was fun, but watching it play out over and over again during the kids football camp hosted by former Southeast Missouri State player and current NFL free agent Edgar Jones at Houck Stadium was about as enjoyable of a way to spend a beautiful Saturday morning as I can imagine.

McFerren, who will be a senior next season, was working at one of the many stations set up on the field at Houck. His job was to prepare each child -- a teammate for the day -- before handing them the ball and sending them running toward teammate Alex Knight, who admirably fell over time and time again as if he was being hit by a 200-pound running back without warning instead of a 50-pound kid he watched run into the pad he was holding.

"The goal of today is they have fun," McFerren said. "They know we're out here and we've got their back, we're supporting them. We play football for Southeast, we make a name for ourselves, but we still have their back if they need anything."

McFerren seemed to be having at least as much fun as the approximately 260 children who participated in the camp before Southeast's spring game.

Edgar Jones, who played for the Dallas Cowboys last season and is a Southeast Missouri State University alumnus, runs a drill at his youth football clinic Saturday at Houck Stadium. (Fred Lynch)

"This is excellent," McFerren said. "I love the kids. I love doing this. I do a lot of this in the summer time for the kids, for the Mean Machines around here. I love doing big things for kids, get them out of trouble. They love football, so I like to give things back to them."

I hate to admit that I can become numb to and even cynical about these types of things when I read or hear about them. It's easy to dismiss them as routine or to think the players are simply fulfilling an obligation. But walking around the field on Saturday, it was impossible not to appreciate the effort of many of the players and impossible to ignore the enthusiasm of the kids.

Perhaps the most important thing about the scene with McFerren was that similar ones were playing out all over the field. Just as one station would explode with loud OHHHHHHHs from a group of players celebrating a kid's emphatic hit on a dummy you could turn around and see another kid doing the worm in celebration as players danced around him. Look over in another direction and there was free safety Eriq Moore jumping up and down as he went up and down his station's line shouting "get excited." Make a lap around the field to see wide receiver Paul McRoberts encouraging young players of all skill levels to "show me what you got" time and again and you could return to find Moore face-to-face with a young boy, both screaming at the top of their lungs before the kid headed off to make a tackle.

"There was one kid who hit a dummy and he bloodied his nose up and he got up and wiped his nose," Jones said. "I was like, 'Yo, that's my type of guy.'"

Jones, a 29-year-old linebacker who played for the Dallas Cowboys last season, has led many similar camps.

"I've been blessed to learn a lot and I feel like a lot of these kids' shoes I've been in because I come from a small town, so it would be selfish for me not to pass back down to them what I've learned," Jones said.

"If they listen, I don't have no problem handing it down to them because maybe it can help them down the road as far as making mistakes and stopping them from making a mistake. That's the thing I'm trying to get to the guys in college because I know they do a lot of things in the community. … You want to get this to where the team has so much support for the community."

Before the event started first-year coach Tom Matukewicz, who along with Jones helped organize the first-time event, told the kids the day was about asking themselves, "How much fun can I possibly have in two hours?"

A child runs toward a Southeast Missouri State football player during a football camp Saturday at Houck Stadium. (Fred Lynch)

And they kept it at that. There was no skill instruction and no tackling lessons or drop-back drills, although I'm sure the team will host those kind of camps at some point. There was just lots of jumping over obstacles, running around cones, catching footballs and tackling dummies. And dancing, lots and lots of dancing.

"First of all, it's an incredible turnout from the community," Southeast athletic director Mark Alnutt said from the stands, where he watched three of his own children participate. "What coach Tuke and I talked about shortly after he got here is making your spring game more of an event and being able to invite the community out. ... Most of these kids this is maybe their first time, opportunity they have to interact with our football student-athletes and our football program, which you know will bode well when it comes to the season to have these kids come back to the game."

That's another goal, of course -- to turn the kids into fans and the fans into tickets sold on future Saturdays, when the stakes are much higher. But I don't think it would be fair to say that's all the event was about.

Matukewicz introduced himself to the kids by explaining that his last name was hard to pronounce and welcoming them to call him "coach Tuke," then he said "I'm your head football coach" before instructing all the kids to show him their best smiles.

It was cheesy, pun intended, but Matukewicz always seems to mix in enough genuineness to make up for it.

One of the final things he told the kids was that they were expected to look people in the eyes when they were talking to them, which would come in handy later when they found themselves face-to-face with McFerren.

"I think they had more fun than the kids had, which is nice to see," Matukewicz said of his players. "But I think it's a good lesson to understand about 'You are a role model, you need to accept that responsibility' and how each and every one of us, if we take the time, can put the smile on a kids face and that's fun to do."

Rachel Crader is the Southeast Missourian and semoball.com sports editor.