Reggie's Other Role

#1

Friday April 6, 2007 3:12PM

Giving back to communities a top priority for Bush

San Diego, CA (SI) -- Reggie Bush is standing in front of a group of kids who barely reach the whistle dangling around his neck as he hopelessly tries to keep them in order while the sun beams down on the football field at Qualcomm Stadium.

"What happened to my line?" he says. "Let's go. You guys do this drill right, we'll get some Gatorade."

Well, hopefully. With over 2,000 kids ranging in age from 7 to 17 sprawled out over the San Diego Chargers' home field for Bush's inaugural "Camp 619," finding enough Gatorade to place in their waving raised hands is proving to be more of a challenge than he thought.

"We're going to need more," says Bush as dozens of kids begin to crowd around him after he's passed out his last bottle. "We're all out and these kids are thirsty."

Thankfully kids have a way of finding tiny bottles of purple stuff, so they all race toward a couple of unopened packs near the southwest corner of the end zone. While Bush opens up a bottle of water for himself, a youngster no taller than his waist line hugs his right leg and says, "Thanks Reggie." It's a scene so picture perfect, you almost want to look around and make sure you aren't in the way of a camera crew shooting the scene for a commercial.

As a smile comes over Bush's face, he pats the child on the head and gathers the rest of the kids back together for some more drills. "It's only 12," he says. "I got you guys for a couple more hours. Let's go." With that, Reggie runs up the stands at Qualcomm and starts doing bleachers with about two dozen kids trailing him and chanting his name, "Reggie, Reggie, Reggie!"

Standing a few feet away, Bush's mother, Denise Griffin, watches the scene and remembers a time when her son's ability to lead youngsters didn't go as well.

"He's always been a leader, but it used to get him in trouble," she says. "I remember when he was at Dailard Elementary school and he used to get up and try to reinstruct the class about how the lesson should be taught instead of letting the teacher do her job. He would get up and try to teach them his way and he always got in trouble for that."

Griffin continues to have flashbacks as she watches her son teach 9-year-olds how to receive a handoff and run up the sideline. "We don't want to fumble in this drill," Bush says as he blows his whistle and hands the ball of to each kid in line. As she watches one kid snatch the ball from Bush and zoom up the field, she can't help but recall the day she knew her son could play football.

"I'll never forget it," she says. "He was about 9 years old and we were in Carlsbad. They had a scrimmage where they only played on half the field because they had so many other teams playing and he scored eight touchdowns. I was shocked. He was just a skinny little something just buzzing back and forth across the field and we were like, 'Wow.' We had no idea and even then we didn't start thinking he would be an NFL player, I just thought, 'Wow, he has a lot of speed.' That's all it was to me then, I never thought it would go this far."

Source: http://tinyurl.com/37mw7d

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#2

nice story....

Lost Ghost · #3

Always, always great to hear about someone giving back. Stories like this make you like the players...and like the NFL for giving people a chance to give back..

In the lue of stories like Pacman Jones coming up all the time....it's great for the league to have stories like these come out....

it's a shame we don't hear about this stuff more often.

#4

i agree. i'll bet there are a ton of nfl players that run foundations and give time to the community. i'm glad to see that guys realize how good they have it and look to spread their good fortunes with others.