Orange Beach holds football skills camp with former and active marquee players

Michael Hanich, Sports Analysis
Posted 7/11/18

As the community of Orange Beach grows, so does the local potential and assets. Over the weekend, many professional athletes (current and former), college football stars, and local coaches held a skills football camp for local young players to

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Orange Beach holds football skills camp with former and active marquee players

Posted

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. -- Many professional athletes (current and former), college football stars, and local coaches held a skills football camp for local young players to learn more skills and to expand interest in the sport of Football. Local senior vice president of Bryant Bank Matt Fetner and former Alabama Crimson Tide, Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins Running Back Bobby Humphrey led the Football camp where close to 50 campers participated in running drills, position drills, gained an excellent knowledge in the sport of football and got to meet many great football stars.

Joining Humphrey were his sons in current Baltimore Ravens Marlon Humphrey and former Arkansas Razorback and UAB Blazer, Maudrecus Humphrey. Other collegiate and professional stars who were also coaching the young athletes were former Gulf Shores Dolphin and Troy Trojans quarterback Brandon Silvers, former Spanish Fort Toro and Auburn Tigers Reese Dismukes, former Alabama Crimson Tide and current Canadian league star for the Saskatchewan Roughriders Trent Richardson. Gulf Shores Dolphins Football head coach Matt Blake and assistant coaches Stephen Hammock and Owen Corcoran were also in attendance to help coach the young athletes.

In the beginning, the campers were together doing warm-up drills as instructed by the counselors. After an impactful speech from Matt Fetner, Bobby Humphrey, and coach Blake to pump up the campers, they were separated into specific athletic drills such as ladder drills, run get off drills, bag drills, and the four directional drill. The campers were then assigned to position-specific drills of quarterbacks taught by Silvers, defensive backs taught by Marlon Humphrey, running back cut drills taught by Trent Richardson, linemen drills taught by Dismukes and wide receiver route and catch drills taught by Maudrecus Humphrey.

Each one of these drills were performed in a high intensity situation where the pro-level players could give the campers quick input on their performance and what they could do to get better. All the campers were interested in participating in the drills and learning from some of the instructors in the game of football. They got all these resources and skill development not in Tuscaloosa or Auburn but in the Sportsplex of Orange Beach.

When asked about the importance of these skill camps in the city of Orange Beach, Bobby Humphrey mentioned, “I think for an area that is really green and doesn’t really thrive or had a big history of athletic and sports, particularly in football, I think having certain things like skill camps come in and expose the youth to a lot of technique and the way things run. So, I think these camps are very, very important.”

Humphrey was thrilled to have his sons coach in the camp where they were able to pass on their knowledge and encouragement to local young athletes.

“I was enjoying being around Marlon and Maudrecus. I enjoyed watching them create a dialogue with the athletes. That’s something I did when I was young and when I coached them at a very young age before (they) moved on to playing in middle school and high school. To see them being able to transfer that wealth of knowledge into these young people, aside from being their father, it’s a very good feeling.”

Marlon Humphrey also reiterated the importance of these camps by saying, “The main thing about coming to these camps is technique. Once you kind of build a technique, you just build and build and build. Once you learn wrong, it’s a little bit tougher to partake these things you learn at just a young age.”

At the end of the camp, all coaches reestablished the importance of following instructions to coaches and to parents. They also mentioned the importance of school as they can not only create a better situation for them in life but also because their knowledge and what they have learned could further better themselves. This skills camp is just the beginning of the sport of football in the city of Orange Beach. For these young athletes, they will go home and potentially take what they have learned and apply to their own training so they could be the next collegiate or professional star like the coaches that instructed them in the camp.