Football is not just a contact sport. It’s a game of discipline, respect, and character. When Teddi Domann and her husband would drop her two boys off at youth football camps, she thought they could do something to make the camps be better. They gathered some people and put together their vision for impacting young people by using the sport of football and run a youth football camp for ages seven to fourteen, which is what is now known as Pro Football Camp. Teddi shares that they’re not only teaching kids proper football but life skills and character qualities that are some of the keys to success for many of the top and most successful people in the world.

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Pro Football Camp: Teaching Football And Character Skills with Teddi Domann

We are with Teddi Domann. She is the Founder and Board Chairperson of Pro Football Camp. Teddi, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me on.

What we’re going to be talking about with Teddi is about Pro Football Camp. If you would, tell us a little bit about Pro Football Camp and who it serves.

The Pro Football Camp is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We serve the youth of the Greater Colorado Springs area. What we do every year is we put on a three-day camp. The camp starts at [8:00] in the morning and it goes to [11:30]. We have current and former NFL athletes who teach not only football skills, which you would expect from a football camp. They also teach character skills. When I talk about character skills, what I mean by that is what does it take to be able to be an athlete who’s able to play in the NFL? That’s a pretty small number of people and it takes some character qualities that candidly are some of the keys to success for many of the top and most successful people in the world. The bottom line is, if you can learn this at a young age, it’s going to impact your life whether you’re playing football or not.

What was the genesis of the idea to do this? How did it start?

It started because our boys, we have two boys, wanted to go to a youth football camp. My husband and I signed them up for several different camps. We would drop them off or pick them up, we’re checking out the camp and I was like, “We could really do this to help this camp be better.” At the end of it, I actually reached out to all three of those camps that my kids attended in and offered our assistance. No one took us up on it.

Because the backstory is people don’t know what else you do.

The back story is that my husband is an attorney and a CPA and what he does is represent NFL athletes. He’s a certified NFL PA agent.

You’re at this crux and you’ve reached out and they’re not interested in your help. What was going through your mind when you said, I think I’m going to do this?

Actually, I reached out to them a second time and no answer. Then my husband and I were talking, I said, “Let’s pray about it,” and so we did. At the end of that time period of praying, I said, “What do you hear what the Lord is saying?” My husband looked right at me and he goes, “You’re supposed to do this?” I said to him, “If we’re going to do this, then we’re going to do it right. It’s going to really make an impact in our community. We got together with some other people who shared our vision, including a former NFL player in Colorado Springs. His name is Rich Griffith. He played with the Jacksonville Jaguars, just short of ten years. He’s actually a pastor at a local church and just retired from that. Now he’s doing full-time missionary work. The bottom line is we all had a vision for impacting young people by using the sport of football and running a youth football camp for ages seven to fourteen.

We had this idea and we’ve got some folks that are in our camp and we all put our heads together. Then you have to go do something. Venue and coaches. Let’s walk through that journey.

It came fairly easy for me because my background is marketing, but in particular it’s sports marketing and even within sports marketing, I’d done a lot of event marketing. As an example, one of my first events that I ever organized and ran was the 1987 US Gymnastics Championships in Kansas City. Then I went from there to running the McDonald’s All American High School basketball game. Started on the local level in Kansas City in 1989. Then I went to work for the national organization, I could go on as far as the number of events that I’d run, but the bottom line is I’ve done a lot of event marketing. It wasn’t hard for me to see exactly the path that needed to be taken and what we needed to organize. Here’s what I’m going to tell you is the secret. The secret is that we had a community of people who rallied behind this. They caught the vision of what we were trying to do. If I were to reiterate, it was to make an impact on our youth in our community.

When our youth are young, they'll learn whatever they're taught. Right or wrong, they'll learn it.

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It’s not only teaching footballs because I always say that’s the carrot and that’s critical. It really is important because that’s what they’re coming for, but here’s what I’m going to teach them, not me by the way, our NFL athletes are going to teach them proper football skills. That was one of the key things because when our youth are young, they’ll learn whatever they’re taught. Right or wrong, they’ll learn it. As an example, one of the things I learned as a mom early on with our two boys is that there are three ways that kids naturally tackle. Two of them, we’ll get them hurt. We want to make sure they learn how to tackle properly. It’s a non-contact camp. That gets confusing to people. What do you mean you’re going to teach them how to tackle properly and you don’t have to have any equipment? No, because we’re going to use dummies and by the way we’re going to have NFL athletes holding those dummies and how fun is that, you get to learn to tackle properly with NFL athletes.

What do you think they might have caught on how to tackle by now, the pro guys?

The kids have a lot of fun being able to learn how to do something proper but they’re learning it from an NFL athlete. Then we make it fun so that athletes holding a dummy, as an example. They’re tackling that dummy so it feels like they’re tackling an NFL player.

I’m thinking about for the kids, you bring them from the community and I can see what’s in it for the kids. What’s in it for the NFL player?

For these NFL players, we ask athletes to come and donate their time. They physically work in the camp. They are teaching the skills. The athletes that do this or just the type of people who love to see that sparkle in a kid’s eye. They love to see them learning and having fun and loving the game that they love. That’s why they do it. I often get asked, why do you have these athletes versus other athletes at your camp? I always say we have the right athletes. Why are they the right athletes? Because number one, they volunteered their time. Number two, they’re going to come out here and they’re going to work. Camp starts at [8:00] and goes to [11:30]. They’re going to work three and a half hours. They’re going to have water breaks just like the kids, and that’s it. The kind of athletes that will do that, donate their time. This is a three-week window for the current athletes, between OTA’s and when training camp starts.

For those that don’t know, OTA?

It’s a time in the spring when the NFL teams bring in all the prospects. The starters that they had from last year and any other athletes that they’re looking at to potentially make the team.

I think folks have a misconception about how frequently through the course of a year an NFL player actually works. I think they see the season of spring training and think they’re playing golf the rest of the time.

From whenever their season ends, they usually have until about the 1st of March. If you made it all the way to the super bowl, they’re going to have one month off. If they didn’t even make it to the playoffs, then they’re going to have two months off. That’s the only time that they have often, they start and you never really have off because you’ve got to constantly be in shape. It’s during that two-month time period that those athletes actually will go and have treatments done. Maybe they’ve had this little thing here is kind got a little hitch in the giddy up. They’ll go in and maybe have a scope done and get it cleaned up in there or something. There are all sorts of things that athletes do during that time period that are actually getting them prepared for the season. Sometimes it’s just actually taking little time off, to allow the body to heal.

Those guys, when they come here, they’re carving time out of their off time.

They have three weeks between the OTAs and the start of training camp, which is two days and then a sixteen weeks season.

For your camp, how long does it last?

Three days.

If there are some kids locally or their parents are listening to this, how do they find you?

Were at ProFootballCamp.com. You look up youth football camp in Colorado Springs and pro football camps should be one of the, if not the highest, search that you find.

How many kids do you host typically?

We average right around to 85 to 300.

How many pro football players to manage that many kids?

We have anywhere from ten to twelve. Here’s something I learned early on working on the pro football camp. Early on we had athletes and we had them all split up and a one year this gentleman, this NFL athlete, he was from Notre Dame, really smart kid playing for the Texans and all of a sudden, I see across the field. He takes his clipboard and he throws it down and he’s like, “That’s it, you guys figure it out.” I’m like, “What do you mean you guys figured it out?” I run over there and I pulled one of our NFL athletes from another drill that was going on and had somebody else take kids. I said, “I’m not sure what just happened here. Here’s what I saw and heard. Can you take over and I’ll figure it out?” He goes, “Sure.” He jumps in there and I go over and talk to our athlete only to basically figure out that although he’s very skilled at his position and was great at teaching his position, what he wasn’t good at was hurting cats. Just not his gifting. From that year on we made sure that we have a number of youth football coaches that actually come to our camp to help with all the drills and skills.

Let’s say we’re doing a quarterback draw. We’re trying to teach them how to properly throw. You’ll see in there that they’ll have a couple volunteers and another youth football coach who will bring that group of kids over and they’ll say, “I need to form three lines of four each. Here, I’ve got the footballs, and then he’ll bring that quarterback in,” and he’ll say, “You go.” The athletes are left to be able to interact with the kids, teach the skill and be able to properly focus on the kids versus focusing on trying to organize them. I will tell you, we’ve even brought high school coaches in. Same kind of thing, they have a hard time coaching seven, fourteen-year-olds.

Pro Football Camp: The athletes are left to be able to interact with the kids, teach the skill and be able to properly focus on the kids versus focusing on trying to organize them.

That’s your range, seven to fourteen?

Exactly.

Is it limited to guys only?

Nope. We have girls all the time.

For the camp, what do you think the makeup of girls to guys is?

Maybe, I would suggest out of 300 we maybe have five to eight. It’s not huge numbers, but the girls who come, they’re good. They’re really good. They’re good little athletes.

How long ago is it that you started this camp?

You’re veterans.

We are veterans. This is our 13th year.

For the kids, what should they expect to pay to come to camp?

Our camp is typically $199, but we constantly are running specials. We’ve been very fortunate the last couple of years where we had a title, a presenting sponsor who donated enough money that we are able to offer discounts. Usually we can get it down to $99. Here’s the other good news. In the thirteen years that we’ve done this camp, we’ve never turned a person away for finances. If anyone says, we’re just not in a position to pay that amount of money. We have a scholarship program to assist them. Just ask or check it out on the web.

That is a 501(c)(3) and so it’s a non-profit so we wanted to support the effort.

We’re always open to donations. If I go back to what you said, why are we still doing this? It is based upon the community, just embracing it. We have donors who every year donate to that scholarship program, we’ve never not been able to support it. Somebody who wanted to come. We have companies that support the various costs that we have so that we’re able to really bring down that cost and make this really affordable for everybody. I will be the first one to say the reason why we keep doing this camp, we have athletes who want to come, we have businesses that want to support it, we have people that donate to it and we have volunteers who graciously give their time. If it weren’t for those four things we would not be able to continue to do this year after year.

I was thinking about the length of time you’ve been doing that and I would imagine that some of your earliest kids are coming back as adults. You and I talked about this some time ago about some of the transformation that has happened for these kids. Let’s dig into a little bit of the transformation or what the kids are getting.

I mentioned early on that one of the things we’ll want them to learn is football skills and the proper football skills. The second thing is that we want them to learn the character that it takes. When I talk about the character, a lot of people are like, I see stuff on the news all the time about the character of NFL athletes. I’m not sure I want them being taught by those guys. Here’s what I’m going to tell you. There are 53 guys that make any active team roster there. How many do you hear about every year that are making bad decisions? Just a few. Unfortunately, the media is not reporting on all the good things the guys do and many of them do. Let’s focus on that for a minute. Let’s talk about those athletes and those are the ones that are at our camp, that are making good decisions.

They made mistakes, absolutely. That makes them people and that makes them real to these kids. They are willing to talk about the mistakes that they’ve made, but there’s a difference between making mistakes that you can bounce back from and making mistakes that impact others negatively. Let’s just say that we focus on bringing athletes that have made for the most part very good decisions and they’re going to share their stories and the hardships that they had around making some of those decisions.

Some of those NFL players haven’t had good early life either.

No, they haven’t but that’s not an on them. You didn’t get to pick your parents. We talk about the impact and when I’m talking about that, we’re talking about character. At our camp, we run every day, three times a day, what we call off the field with the pros. During off the field with the pros, that’s where the athletes talk about character. We allow the athletes to choose the word of the day. We’ve had over the years a number of different words of the day. Let’s take perseverance. That’s one of my favorite ones that the athletes will choose. I think the reason why they choose it, it’s a rich word. There are a lot behind the word perseverance. The other thing that is one of my favorite things is when you interview, say a seven-year-old, they can barely say the word perseverance. By the time they finished camp that day, they understand what that word means, because they’ve heard the athletes talk about persevering through injuries. Persevering through the backgrounds, the life things that have happened to them. They didn’t cause them. Somebody who’s born into a life and put into foster care that is nothing on their doing at all. That happened to them, but how do you overcome that?

We need to talk about those kinds of things. We talk about that mindset that it takes to be able to persevere through the hardships that life just brings. One of the things that I find very interesting and you talked to anybody, could be adults, doesn’t have to just be kids, but we are focusing on the kids that we impacted in our camp. Most people think that the way to the top is that your life goes like this. Nothing bad ever happens and that’s just not the reality. We want to talk about the ups and downs and wiggles and things that they had to overcome to be able to get there. That’s a big one. Another area that we like to focus on is the kinds of things that you truly have the choice under, which is things like respect. You choose to be respectful. You choose to be respectful of your teacher, whether or not they’re a good teacher or not. You choose that. Respect is a big one and our athletes love to talk about that because what does respect look like on a football field? Have you ever thought about that? A lot of kids don’t know that and how do you learn that? Sometimes that is the difference between them making their high school team or not. They may not be the most gifted athlete, but if they’re showing respect or another word effort, if they’re showing effort, they’re going to make a team.

They’re going to have the chance to develop and to be a part of the team and all the wonderful things that you learned on being a part of the team. Those are some of the things that we try to teach at the camp. We’re not teaching to a high-level athlete. When we started this camp, we said if we do this for ten years and we have one kid that makes it to the NFL, we’ll break every statistic that’s known to men. Now, is it possible? Absolutely. Is it probable? No, but it is possible. The math is against you, but it is possible. We definitely talk about what does it take to become an NFL athlete, but we recognize that just learning as part of the process, the process of getting to be the best, you can take and apply that to anything in the world.

In order to really be able to play college ball, you’ve got to make your grades.