Leaving a footprint of character and skills

Stories of professional athletes who have fallen off their pedestals and taken the adoration and respect of their fans down with them play out in the media far too often. But, Buddy Curry and the friends he is bringing with him to Danville at the end of the month are athletes who understand and accept the role they play in the lives of young athletes.

There are three ways to register:

• Go to http://www.kidsandpros.com and click on “register” on the left.

• Go by All Star Sports at 385 Piney Forest Road

• Call (877) 551-2267.

• The cost for the weeklong camp is $119, and limited scholarships are available.

 

Curry is an well-known athlete around the community. He played high school football in the mid-1970s for Alger Pugh, the legendary football coach at George Washington High, went on to the University of North Carolina and then played pro football with the Atlanta Falcons from 1980 to 1987.

After retiring from the NFL, he started in the transportation business. He and his wife, Dawn, and their children lived in Danville and Chapel Hill during the 1990s, then moved back to Atlanta in 2001where he became the vice-president of business development for a company that helped transition college grads from sports to business posi-tions.

He left that position three years ago and started the Kids and Pros Youth Football Experience a year later.

“This is the second year we have done the Kids and Pros football camp in Danville,” Curry said. “We call it an ‘experience’ because it changes kids’ lives. We use retired and current NFL football players to teach football and character to kids … It’s a camp where kids get better and better every day.”

The football camp will be held from 6-9 p.m. July 27-30 at Dan Daniel Memorial Park. Then on July 31, there will be a Kids and Pros Festival with an interactive game and “Sports Fest” from 5-5:30 p.m., followed by an auto-graph session and then a Pros and Joes game, featuring current or former pro football players playing against regular “Joes” from the community at 8.

The two benefits

Curry said the camp offers two benefits to the kids who attend: learning from pro athletes who are some of the most influential people in the country and learning character development through adversity.

Speaking about the first benefit of the camp, Curry said, “The fact is professional athletes do model and teach through their lives. The responsibility comes with the job; one cannot proclaim that he is not a role model because it comes with the position, (as) with any position of leadership, such as government, media, business and the clergy. People look up to and are affected by their actions.

“People do make mistakes, and there needs to be forgiveness, but there should be a higher accountability. Leaders should not make excuses for poor behavior and decisions, but should admit their failure and willingly accept their due punishment.”

Curry said he is “sickened” whenever he hears of another athlete making the news because of poor behavior and is “thankful for God’s grace” in his own life.

The pro athletes involved in the camp sessions share a personal experience related to one of the camp’s five core principles of sportsmanship, integrity, excellence, perseverance and teamwork, Curry said.

“The messages are shared from the heart and are very impactful to the kids and families,” Curry said. “The pro athletes are very real with the kids during the camps. We try to choose high-character athletes who can openly discuss any past poor decisions. We believe most mistakes can be overcome by accepting the consequences of the poor decision and moving on by doing the right thing the right way.”

Training through adversity

In addition to character lessons, the pros challenge the kids to work hard and master each drill taught in the camp, providing life lesson discussions even during the skills part of the camp.

“There are also many opportunities to require the kids to stretch their physical capacity through the week-long camp,” he said. “Lack of discipline, laziness and poor attitude are the main challenges we overcome in the first two days of camp.”

As far as teaching through adversity, Curry said emphatically that playing football is a dictatorship, not democ-racy.

“There can be little autonomy in executing the skills and techniques of the game, so we require the athletes to perform each drill and skill with excellence,” he said. “This means having a good attitude, trying as hard as they can and improving each repetition. So you will hear coaches talking about looking at and listening to the coach (or parent and teacher), finishing the drill and repeating the drill until the athlete completes it correctly.”

“We challenge them to improve each day and get more confidence in themselves. Competence precedes confidence. Kids lives change because of doing drills the right way each day and players talking about character. It makes them more inspired in school, and we talk about helping their family and at home.”

Another reason that the Currys started the Kids and Pros business is to teach their own four children — three sons and a daughter — some of life’s lessons.

“Dawn and I and our family decided to do it as kind of an adventure,” he said. “We also wanted a family business to give back to the community and for our kids to understand how a business operates.”

Camp details

The Danville camp is for boys ages 7-13. Curry said he hopes to register 200 kids by today to attend.

Tuition assistance is available, which Curry called a “hand up, not a hand out.”

“The parents will have to give some income information, and the kids will have to write a paragraph,” he said.

The pro players who will be heading the camp include Ken Oxedine, Jeremy Phillips and Bobby Butler, all of whom played for the Falcons.

The Kids and Pros Experience has also been held four times in Atlanta and one in Tallahassee.

“Another part of this is a free youth football coaches clinic to train coaches to be effective leaders,” Curry said. “There are so many positions in football, and coaching them are all so intricate. We teach them how to organize and administer their team.”

Coaches can sign up on the Web site at http://www.kidsandpros.com.

“We are doing this to start a business we know we can grow and have a footprint all over the country,” Curry said.