For reasons that TigerBlog will get into tomorrow, he was unable to be at the Jason Garrett Starfish Charities Play It Smart Football Camp at Princeton Saturday. In his place, TB turns over the floor today to another Penn alum whose heart is really part of Princeton.
Zack DeGregorio has been a big part of the camp, not to mention a universally well-loved part of the Princeton Athletic fabric. Here are his words about Jason Garrett's Camp:
The 21st annual Jason Garrett Starfish Charities Play It Smart Football Camp looked like it was going to get off to a rough start. Ahead of the Dig Deep Fund Run, named for late football coach and the author’s father Steve DiGregorio, thunder, lightning, and pouring rain looked like it was going to cancel the run. But, as always seems to happen with this camp, the skies cleared 30 minutes before the run and, to the sounds of Princeton basketball great Bobby Scrabis’ band playing us out, we were able to run through campus and raise money for the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI).
It kicked off a week where Jason and Brill Garrett brought 325 high school football players to Princeton’s campus from the tri-state area to find one “starfish.” I’ve heard the story 1,000 times (I believe this was my 17th camp as a ball boy, player, now a coach): Jason is sitting at Brill’s graduation (she’s class of 1988, and he’s class of 1989) and the speaker tells a story about an old man walking down the beach and he comes across a young man walking along the shore throwing starfish back into the ocean. Eventually the old man catches up to the young man and asks him what he’s doing. There was a storm last night and the tide is going out, explains the young man. If the starfish don’t make it back into the water, they’ll dry up and die. The old man responds, confused. “The beach goes on for miles and there must be thousands of starfish! You’ll never make a difference.” The young man reaches down, picks up another starfish, throws it back in the water and says “you’re right, but I can make a difference to that one.”
To hear Jason tell it, the story hit him like a ton of bricks. After the graduation he and Brill, agreed that, if they have had the ability to give back in a big way, it’d be with that story in mind. So, when Jason was playing in the NFL, Jason Garrett Starfish Charities was born and along with it, the camp and its mission. The camp would bring these kids to Princeton University to play football, but the goal of the camp was to get one kid to look around the campus and say “You know what? I could do this. I belong at a place like this.”
The camp is the highlight of my year and has always been veritable who’s who of Princeton football of the last 35 years. Before the Dig Deep Fun Run, I got to catch up with Brian Barren, a great Princeton player and current president of the Cleveland Guardians. I coached with former Princeton captain Jimmy Archie all day on Saturday. After camp, I spent time talking to Miami Dolphins fullback and two-time Bushnell winner John Lovett about everything from mental illness to whether or not he would be the greatest lacrosse player in the world if he tried.
But, while it’s rooted in Princeton Football and Jason’s college teammates, the camp always has NFL talent on deck for the kids. This year, Giants QB Daniel Jones and WR David Sills IV were on hand to coach the kids, as well as former NFL players like Chris Simms (now Jason’s coworker at NBC Sports), Babe Laufenberg and Jerome Henderson. Beyond that, Admiral Bill McRaven and his wife Georgeanne have become mainstays at the camp every year, as well as former Navy SEAL Scott Rathke. NBC Sports producer and inventor of the yellow first down line on your football broadcasts Fred Gaudelli is always there, and so is former Cowboys assistant and current Browns defensive line coach Ben Bloom. Freddie Santana, a former Play It Smart camp MVP, and his Teach for America roommate Jared Gourier are two of the most impressive people I have ever met and have become integral in helping Jason and Brill shape the camp and the programing for the campers.
This year also featured a distinct Princeton Basketball twist. Thanks to Jason’s relationship to Coach Carril and Howard Levy, Friday night’s welcome dinner featured a panel about Coach Carril and his leadership style with some of Carril’s greatest players: Brian Taylor, Joe Scott, Bobby Scrabbis, John Rogers, Howard Levy, Craig Robinson, and Armond Hill. Coach Carril often held court at these Friday night dinners before the camp, picking a spot at a table while the room cycled through the seats next to him as he told stories and somehow never ran out of beer. This time, it was the panel of Princeton basketball legends telling stories about Coach and the bonds he helped them forge (I believe in the 45-minute panel discussion, Howie and Craig told each other they loved each other at least twice).
The next morning, with 325 high schoolers in front of him on Power Field at Princeton Stadium, Jason kept coming back to the same word: opportunity. This was an opportunity for these kids to learn not just about football but also about life from people at the top of their fields who had taken time out of their lives to be with them, to try to convince them they belonged at a place like Princeton. Opportunities were all around them, he said, and they had to make the choice to take advantage of them.
I really think that word is the camp in a nutshell for me: opportunity. I’ve been coming to the camp since I was young, and every year, it’s an opportunity to see some of my favorite people—people I have looked up to for as long as I can remember. People from whom I’ve been able to learn so much at different stages in my life. People I am incredibly lucky to call friends. For as long as I can remember, I have always strived to be one of the people who sit at the front of the room on the Friday night before the camp, where a room full of the people I love and respect the most want to pick my brain about leadership or the world or something I accomplished.
You might have noticed that, in this post about a football camp, I have not written a single thing about the actual football games played on Saturday—and that’s the point. Football is just the vehicle by which all these coaches are trying to reach these kids and plant a seed of belief in them so that it can grow into belief in themselves. So, after a long day of games and life skills, all the coaches and their families gather for Contes pizza, beer, and music in Princeton Stadium, bragging about their wins and ranting about their losses on the field. But they’re also talking about their wins with the kids—who went 1-4 but had a linebacker picking his teammates up all day and encouraging them to keep fighting? Who asked one of their coaches for a phone number or an email? Who had a different look in their eye at the end of the day?
As the sun sets, some head over to the Tap Room to keep the party going, while others have to head to their hotel or catch a flight home. Goodbyes at the camp can take anywhere from 15 minutes or an hour and a half (as was the case for me), which, to me, is the mark of a great group. No matter how long it takes, though, they always end with an enthusiastic “see you next year.”
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