Bonney Lake High School Plays Host to Football University

On a Saturday in late spring, when most families would be enjoying a lazy morning at home, Bonney Lake High School swarmed with activity. Students and parents from as far as Canada, coaches, volunteers and big names in the NFL gathered for Football University the weekend of May 20-22.

Football University (FBU) is a training camp that travels across North America, beginning in Honolulu, Hawaii, ending in Nova Scotia, Canada and hitting almost 40 locations altogether. Football players from sixth to eleventh grade are nominated to participate by their coaches and parents. After the nominations are validated, FBU sends invitations to those who they believe will benefit most from their program.

National scouts are present at the camp to work specifically with the high school students, and every January culminates in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio, Texas. There, the best high school football players from the East play against the best high school football players from the West, and the game is broadcast on television by NBC Sports. Bonney Lake High School’s Head Football Coach Chad Barrett will be an assistant coach at the next All-American Bowl in 2012.

FBU is also known for the MTV show “The Ride,” which follows high school football players on their way to the All-American Bowl.

Director of operations for FBU, John Davis, generously made time for a short but helpful, interview before he was called away to find the athletic trainer for a boy who had jammed his finger.

Davis told Patch that the students FBU works with are the top 5 percent of football players from Canada and the United States.

“In my humble opinion, I don’t think that there is another organization that puts as good a technical product on the field for these kids,” Davis said. “Our goal is to have the kids walk away a more confident, technically correct football player.”

Throughout the weekend, the students move back and forth between the classroom and the field. This weekend, they learned from Cris Dishman, current defensive backs coach for the San Diego Chargers, Tommie Robinson, current running backs coach for the Arizona Cardinals, Chris Miller, current quarterbacks coach for the Arizona Cardinals, Mike Wilson, current wide receivers coach for the Cleveland Browns, and Rex Norris, a retired NFL coach considered to be “the dean of defensive line coaches.”

"[These men] are in the classroom breaking down film and teaching on the whiteboard. They also come out on the field and they help the kids connect the dots from what they show them on film and on paper, to putting it into practice out on the field,” said Davis.

At the end of the weekend, each football player receives an honest evaluation of his performance. Bonney Lake High School assistant coach and director of football operations Peter Esser said, “They are treated like athletes, not children.” Each student finds out where he excels, and what he needs to improve on if he is going to progress any further.

In addition to six core staff members of the FBU program and Bonney Lake’s football coaches, the program at BLHS was made possible by around 30 volunteers, including Bonney Lake Football Boosters, parents of some of the students, and many local athletes as well.

Davis explained that BLHS was chosen to host FBU because “it lays out well for what we do in terms of the process of our camp, but they also held the camp here last year and just had a phenomenal level of support.”

He praised the “cooperative spirit” of the Bonney Lake community.