Pro Football Camp: Teaching Football And Character Skills with Teddi Domann

Football is not just a contact sport. It’s a game of discipline, respect, and character. When Teddi Domann and her husband would drop her two boys off at youth football camps, she thought they could do something to make the camps be better. They gathered some people and put together their vision for impacting young people by using the sport of football and run a youth football camp for ages seven to fourteen, which is what is now known as Pro Football Camp. Teddi shares that they’re not only teaching kids proper football but life skills and character qualities that are some of the keys to success for many of the top and most successful people in the world.

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Pro Football Camp: Teaching Football And Character Skills with Teddi Domann

We are with Teddi Domann. She is the Founder and Board Chairperson of Pro Football Camp. Teddi, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me on.

What we’re going to be talking about with Teddi is about Pro Football Camp. If you would, tell us a little bit about Pro Football Camp and who it serves.

The Pro Football Camp is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We serve the youth of the Greater Colorado Springs area. What we do every year is we put on a three-day camp. The camp starts at [8:00] in the morning and it goes to [11:30]. We have current and former NFL athletes who teach not only football skills, which you would expect from a football camp. They also teach character skills. When I talk about character skills, what I mean by that is what does it take to be able to be an athlete who’s able to play in the NFL? That’s a pretty small number of people and it takes some character qualities that candidly are some of the keys to success for many of the top and most successful people in the world. The bottom line is, if you can learn this at a young age, it’s going to impact your life whether you’re playing football or not.

What was the genesis of the idea to do this? How did it start?

It started because our boys, we have two boys, wanted to go to a youth football camp. My husband and I signed them up for several different camps. We would drop them off or pick them up, we’re checking out the camp and I was like, “We could really do this to help this camp be better.” At the end of it, I actually reached out to all three of those camps that my kids attended in and offered our assistance. No one took us up on it.

Because the backstory is people don’t know what else you do.

The back story is that my husband is an attorney and a CPA and what he does is represent NFL athletes. He’s a certified NFL PA agent.

You’re at this crux and you’ve reached out and they’re not interested in your help. What was going through your mind when you said, I think I’m going to do this?

Actually, I reached out to them a second time and no answer. Then my husband and I were talking, I said, “Let’s pray about it,” and so we did. At the end of that time period of praying, I said, “What do you hear what the Lord is saying?” My husband looked right at me and he goes, “You’re supposed to do this?” I said to him, “If we’re going to do this, then we’re going to do it right. It’s going to really make an impact in our community. We got together with some other people who shared our vision, including a former NFL player in Colorado Springs. His name is Rich Griffith. He played with the Jacksonville Jaguars, just short of ten years. He’s actually a pastor at a local church and just retired from that. Now he’s doing full-time missionary work. The bottom line is we all had a vision for impacting young people by using the sport of football and running a youth football camp for ages seven to fourteen.

We had this idea and we’ve got some folks that are in our camp and we all put our heads together. Then you have to go do something. Venue and coaches. Let’s walk through that journey.

It came fairly easy for me because my background is marketing, but in particular it’s sports marketing and even within sports marketing, I’d done a lot of event marketing. As an example, one of my first events that I ever organized and ran was the 1987 US Gymnastics Championships in Kansas City. Then I went from there to running the McDonald’s All American High School basketball game. Started on the local level in Kansas City in 1989. Then I went to work for the national organization, I could go on as far as the number of events that I’d run, but the bottom line is I’ve done a lot of event marketing. It wasn’t hard for me to see exactly the path that needed to be taken and what we needed to organize. Here’s what I’m going to tell you is the secret. The secret is that we had a community of people who rallied behind this. They caught the vision of what we were trying to do. If I were to reiterate, it was to make an impact on our youth in our community.

When our youth are young, they’ll learn whatever they’re taught. Right or wrong, they’ll learn it.

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It’s not only teaching footballs because I always say that’s the carrot and that’s critical. It really is important because that’s what they’re coming for, but here’s what I’m going to teach them, not me by the way, our NFL athletes are going to teach them proper football skills. That was one of the key things because when our youth are young, they’ll learn whatever they’re taught. Right or wrong, they’ll learn it. As an example, one of the things I learned as a mom early on with our two boys is that there are three ways that kids naturally tackle. Two of them, we’ll get them hurt. We want to make sure they learn how to tackle properly. It’s a non-contact camp. That gets confusing to people. What do you mean you’re going to teach them how to tackle properly and you don’t have to have any equipment? No, because we’re going to use dummies and by the way we’re going to have NFL athletes holding those dummies and how fun is that, you get to learn to tackle properly with NFL athletes.

What do you think they might have caught on how to tackle by now, the pro guys?

The kids have a lot of fun being able to learn how to do something proper but they’re learning it from an NFL athlete. Then we make it fun so that athletes holding a dummy, as an example. They’re tackling that dummy so it feels like they’re tackling an NFL player.

I’m thinking about for the kids, you bring them from the community and I can see what’s in it for the kids. What’s in it for the NFL player?

For these NFL players, we ask athletes to come and donate their time. They physically work in the camp. They are teaching the skills. The athletes that do this or just the type of people who love to see that sparkle in a kid’s eye. They love to see them learning and having fun and loving the game that they love. That’s why they do it. I often get asked, why do you have these athletes versus other athletes at your camp? I always say we have the right athletes. Why are they the right athletes? Because number one, they volunteered their time. Number two, they’re going to come out here and they’re going to work. Camp starts at [8:00] and goes to [11:30]. They’re going to work three and a half hours. They’re going to have water breaks just like the kids, and that’s it. The kind of athletes that will do that, donate their time. This is a three-week window for the current athletes, between OTA’s and when training camp starts.

For those that don’t know, OTA?

It’s a time in the spring when the NFL teams bring in all the prospects. The starters that they had from last year and any other athletes that they’re looking at to potentially make the team.

I think folks have a misconception about how frequently through the course of a year an NFL player actually works. I think they see the season of spring training and think they’re playing golf the rest of the time.

From whenever their season ends, they usually have until about the 1st of March. If you made it all the way to the super bowl, they’re going to have one month off. If they didn’t even make it to the playoffs, then they’re going to have two months off. That’s the only time that they have often, they start and you never really have off because you’ve got to constantly be in shape. It’s during that two-month time period that those athletes actually will go and have treatments done. Maybe they’ve had this little thing here is kind got a little hitch in the giddy up. They’ll go in and maybe have a scope done and get it cleaned up in there or something. There are all sorts of things that athletes do during that time period that are actually getting them prepared for the season. Sometimes it’s just actually taking little time off, to allow the body to heal.

Those guys, when they come here, they’re carving time out of their off time.

They have three weeks between the OTAs and the start of training camp, which is two days and then a sixteen weeks season.

For your camp, how long does it last?

Three days.

If there are some kids locally or their parents are listening to this, how do they find you?

Were at ProFootballCamp.com. You look up youth football camp in Colorado Springs and pro football camps should be one of the, if not the highest, search that you find.

How many kids do you host typically?

We average right around to 85 to 300.

How many pro football players to manage that many kids?

We have anywhere from ten to twelve. Here’s something I learned early on working on the pro football camp. Early on we had athletes and we had them all split up and a one year this gentleman, this NFL athlete, he was from Notre Dame, really smart kid playing for the Texans and all of a sudden, I see across the field. He takes his clipboard and he throws it down and he’s like, “That’s it, you guys figure it out.” I’m like, “What do you mean you guys figured it out?” I run over there and I pulled one of our NFL athletes from another drill that was going on and had somebody else take kids. I said, “I’m not sure what just happened here. Here’s what I saw and heard. Can you take over and I’ll figure it out?” He goes, “Sure.” He jumps in there and I go over and talk to our athlete only to basically figure out that although he’s very skilled at his position and was great at teaching his position, what he wasn’t good at was hurting cats. Just not his gifting. From that year on we made sure that we have a number of youth football coaches that actually come to our camp to help with all the drills and skills.

Let’s say we’re doing a quarterback draw. We’re trying to teach them how to properly throw. You’ll see in there that they’ll have a couple volunteers and another youth football coach who will bring that group of kids over and they’ll say, “I need to form three lines of four each. Here, I’ve got the footballs, and then he’ll bring that quarterback in,” and he’ll say, “You go.” The athletes are left to be able to interact with the kids, teach the skill and be able to properly focus on the kids versus focusing on trying to organize them. I will tell you, we’ve even brought high school coaches in. Same kind of thing, they have a hard time coaching seven, fourteen-year-olds.

Pro Football Camp: The athletes are left to be able to interact with the kids, teach the skill and be able to properly focus on the kids versus focusing on trying to organize them.

That’s your range, seven to fourteen?

Exactly.

Is it limited to guys only?

Nope. We have girls all the time.

For the camp, what do you think the makeup of girls to guys is?

Maybe, I would suggest out of 300 we maybe have five to eight. It’s not huge numbers, but the girls who come, they’re good. They’re really good. They’re good little athletes.

How long ago is it that you started this camp?

You’re veterans.

We are veterans. This is our 13th year.

For the kids, what should they expect to pay to come to camp?

Our camp is typically $199, but we constantly are running specials. We’ve been very fortunate the last couple of years where we had a title, a presenting sponsor who donated enough money that we are able to offer discounts. Usually we can get it down to $99. Here’s the other good news. In the thirteen years that we’ve done this camp, we’ve never turned a person away for finances. If anyone says, we’re just not in a position to pay that amount of money. We have a scholarship program to assist them. Just ask or check it out on the web.

That is a 501(c)(3) and so it’s a non-profit so we wanted to support the effort.

We’re always open to donations. If I go back to what you said, why are we still doing this? It is based upon the community, just embracing it. We have donors who every year donate to that scholarship program, we’ve never not been able to support it. Somebody who wanted to come. We have companies that support the various costs that we have so that we’re able to really bring down that cost and make this really affordable for everybody. I will be the first one to say the reason why we keep doing this camp, we have athletes who want to come, we have businesses that want to support it, we have people that donate to it and we have volunteers who graciously give their time. If it weren’t for those four things we would not be able to continue to do this year after year.

I was thinking about the length of time you’ve been doing that and I would imagine that some of your earliest kids are coming back as adults. You and I talked about this some time ago about some of the transformation that has happened for these kids. Let’s dig into a little bit of the transformation or what the kids are getting.

I mentioned early on that one of the things we’ll want them to learn is football skills and the proper football skills. The second thing is that we want them to learn the character that it takes. When I talk about the character, a lot of people are like, I see stuff on the news all the time about the character of NFL athletes. I’m not sure I want them being taught by those guys. Here’s what I’m going to tell you. There are 53 guys that make any active team roster there. How many do you hear about every year that are making bad decisions? Just a few. Unfortunately, the media is not reporting on all the good things the guys do and many of them do. Let’s focus on that for a minute. Let’s talk about those athletes and those are the ones that are at our camp, that are making good decisions.

They made mistakes, absolutely. That makes them people and that makes them real to these kids. They are willing to talk about the mistakes that they’ve made, but there’s a difference between making mistakes that you can bounce back from and making mistakes that impact others negatively. Let’s just say that we focus on bringing athletes that have made for the most part very good decisions and they’re going to share their stories and the hardships that they had around making some of those decisions.

Some of those NFL players haven’t had good early life either.

No, they haven’t but that’s not an on them. You didn’t get to pick your parents. We talk about the impact and when I’m talking about that, we’re talking about character. At our camp, we run every day, three times a day, what we call off the field with the pros. During off the field with the pros, that’s where the athletes talk about character. We allow the athletes to choose the word of the day. We’ve had over the years a number of different words of the day. Let’s take perseverance. That’s one of my favorite ones that the athletes will choose. I think the reason why they choose it, it’s a rich word. There are a lot behind the word perseverance. The other thing that is one of my favorite things is when you interview, say a seven-year-old, they can barely say the word perseverance. By the time they finished camp that day, they understand what that word means, because they’ve heard the athletes talk about persevering through injuries. Persevering through the backgrounds, the life things that have happened to them. They didn’t cause them. Somebody who’s born into a life and put into foster care that is nothing on their doing at all. That happened to them, but how do you overcome that?

We need to talk about those kinds of things. We talk about that mindset that it takes to be able to persevere through the hardships that life just brings. One of the things that I find very interesting and you talked to anybody, could be adults, doesn’t have to just be kids, but we are focusing on the kids that we impacted in our camp. Most people think that the way to the top is that your life goes like this. Nothing bad ever happens and that’s just not the reality. We want to talk about the ups and downs and wiggles and things that they had to overcome to be able to get there. That’s a big one. Another area that we like to focus on is the kinds of things that you truly have the choice under, which is things like respect. You choose to be respectful. You choose to be respectful of your teacher, whether or not they’re a good teacher or not. You choose that. Respect is a big one and our athletes love to talk about that because what does respect look like on a football field? Have you ever thought about that? A lot of kids don’t know that and how do you learn that? Sometimes that is the difference between them making their high school team or not. They may not be the most gifted athlete, but if they’re showing respect or another word effort, if they’re showing effort, they’re going to make a team.

They’re going to have the chance to develop and to be a part of the team and all the wonderful things that you learned on being a part of the team. Those are some of the things that we try to teach at the camp. We’re not teaching to a high-level athlete. When we started this camp, we said if we do this for ten years and we have one kid that makes it to the NFL, we’ll break every statistic that’s known to men. Now, is it possible? Absolutely. Is it probable? No, but it is possible. The math is against you, but it is possible. We definitely talk about what does it take to become an NFL athlete, but we recognize that just learning as part of the process, the process of getting to be the best, you can take and apply that to anything in the world.

In order to really be able to play college ball, you’ve got to make your grades.

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I think about, the quantity of kids that make it to college ball, and you think that’s a pretty good group of folks. What percentage of that crowd makes it to the NFL? The funnel gets really, really narrow. Obviously, skill matters, luck, few other things matter, timing and all that stuff. I think for the kids and for the college players too, you’d better have a plan B, because you’re not going to play football until you die.

Here’s what’s interesting and we do talk about getting good grades in school and the reason why we do is because in order to really be able to play college ball, you’ve got to make your grades. You’ve got to be able to academically make grades, pass all of your classes. Obviously, let’s say your skill level in football is really high. You’re blessed with athleticism and you’re blessed with an athletic body. You get offers from big schools, but you can’t handle it academically. You’re not going there. In fact, they’re probably not even recruiting you. I know people hear stories about athletes getting pushed through academically and I’m sure there are those, but for the majority of the kids that have scholarships in college, that’s not the case.

I think about the level of sophistication of sports, and if you’re not a learner, I think you’re going to be challenged.

That’s part of the weeding out process. If you look at it from the NFL perspective, you’ve got to learn their playbook. Each week you’ve got a new team and there’s a new playbook and you’ve got to study film. They spend more hours studying film than they ever do on the field. Twice as many hours every single day. If you don’t like to learn, you’re not going to like even football, you’re not going to like it. You’ve got to be a learner. The athletes emphasize that. They talked to them, you’ve got to get good grades and here’s why. If I go back to the impact that the Pro Football Camp makes, let me tell you a little bit of the story. We had this one young man who came to our camp, but how I got to know the young man because there are so many young athletes on the field, is I happened to notice this person going from group to group. I thought he didn’t look old enough to be a parent but he looked too old to be a brother.

I went up to him and I said, “I just noticed that you’re following this group around, who are you here with?” He pointed at this young man and I said, “What’s the connection?” He said, “I’m actually his youth football coach.” I said, “Really?” He goes, “I coach him in park and rec,” and I said, “Why are you here?” He said, “I’ve coached for a number of years, but this last fall when he showed up to youth football, he was a different kid. I go, “What do you mean?” He goes, “He showed up early. He did everything I asked him to do. He gave me a 100% effort. When I started talking to him, things about school and stuff, he now cared about his grades and I finally said to him, “What happened?” Something happened and he goes, “I’ve got a scholarship to the Pro Football Camp.” He said, “Pro Football Camp? Tell me about it.” He says, “I went to this youth football camp taught by NFL athletes. They told me that if I’ve got good grades, if I did what the coach told me, if I worked really hard, gave it everything that I had that I had the possibility of making it to the NFL. I’m going to do it.”

You and I both know that young kid may never make it to the NFL but does it matter? It doesn’t matter, because what he’s learned, the new habits that he’s learned, hard work, effort, being his best, being respectful, being on time. That will serve him in wherever his path goes. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the impact that we make in this community. We hear the stories over and over and over again. I can gloat to you that we think we’ve had around ten kids make it in college ball and I could name some names off right now of the ones that I know, but to me that’s not as impactful as that story that I just told you. That’s the story I want to tell, because that is the impact that we can make times 300.

I think about the impact on the NFL players would come in and give back. I think about the kids. What are you hearing from the parents? What do the parents come back and tell you?

If you go to our website ProFootballCamp.com, you can read the testimonials, asked me. I can show you. Every year I collect these testimonials and I don’t want to say proudly because I did anything but I proudly because that is the power that happens at this camp by these NFL athletes sharing the stories. I can show you the testimonials year after year after year. The second thing that we do every year, and this is the marketer in me as we do a marketing survey. We literally asked the parents to tell us between attitudes and behaviors, the changes that they’ve seen on a number of different scales, number of different areas. Please, if you’re interested in really delving down into that, I’m happy to share that.

For the folks that are listening, not everybody is blessed to be on the front range of Colorado. You were talking about some kids that have come a long way, to be in the camp. There may be other folks going like, I’d like to do something similar in my community and how do you get that going. For the kids here, can they come back year after year?

Absolutely, yes. We’ve had kids who’ve come every single year. They love it. We’ve had kids who are scholarship kids who come every single year. We’re happy. Great. Fill out the scholarship application. You know the drill. You’re in. In fact, a young man that was a scholarship kid for us during his middle school years. Then he ended up going to a high school here in Colorado Springs that’s known to be a very good football school. He ended up going to a junior college, adding California and after one semester of junior college he’s now in a D1 school and he came back to share his story and to thank us for what he had learned at the Pro Football Camp, back in middle school.

I think about learning the right way to do things first, so you don’t have to unlearn all the other urban myth for lack of a better term. We’re heading toward the end of this portion of the episode of the podcast. Is there something about that I should have asked or something you’d like to say to the folks out there about the camp?

I would just say that if this sounds like something that your kid would be interested in, whether they have an interest in football or not, by the way. I can tell you of the kid who came every single year to our camp, never played one down, a football, he was a soccer player, but he loved what he learned. He loved what he learned and he became a better athlete and a better person because of it. I would just say that if any of this impacts you in any way, shape or form that you’re interested in, look at it. Take a look at it. Don’t let me be the person says you. Let the testimonials that we have on our website. Those aren’t anything that we’ve created this or you can watch the videos and hear for yourself, the impact that this campus had. I hope that you’ll join us. If possibly you’re somebody like, my kids are already out of the nest, but you’re interested, please join us. Whether you want to volunteer, whether you want to donate, whether your business was to become aligned with ours. Please give us a call. I’ll be happy to talk.

We’re going to shift gears a little bit and go through the part of the podcast where I get to quiz you. For you, a recent book or an influential book that’s altered your perception on how you run this organization or how you approach things.

One of the books that I refer to quite often, the principles for it, is the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, using it all the time. In fact, part of the reason why I met you, Bob, was I was trying to sharpen my saw.

7 Habits Of Highly Effective People

In looking from the fits and starts of getting this organization going and was there any failures through that period of time or something that might have appeared as a failure that helped you later to put this thing together?

One of the stories I love to tell us about that NFL athlete that threw down his clipboard. I’m just realizing that to make the most of the NFL athlete and what they could offer, that nobody else can. Again, going back to one of those Steven Covey principles, which is do the things that only you can do. I needed to put those NFL athletes in the position to do the things that only they could do. That was to demonstrate and to teach the football skills. I can get youth football coaches who gladly will come out and help during the camp to organize the kids.

I think about the impact on the athlete to the kid? That was a one-on-one gig but when the youth coaches get to watch the concepts and strategies taught by the NFL. What are you hearing from the coaches?

They come back every year. Every year they come back. Back in January, they’re creating a calendar. When’s camp? Get it on my calendar.

Are you hearing that they’re changing their coaching styles from what they’re learning?

They always learned something. They tell us that every year, they always learn something that they can take and use with their youth kids.

I think that part is the multiplier effect where you’re coaching the coaches. That’s the indirect benefit.

One of the coaches that we have come every year is a coach that is the head for the youth for park and rec. We went to him early on and said, who are some of the best youth coaches? Because we’d like to invite them to come coach at our camp and you know, they told us the name and this one in particular said, I want to tell you about this guy. He goes, because every year I throw him a bunch of kids and every year he puts this team together and they’re always successful. They may not win every game, but they are always on the winning side of things and he does it because he just loves to coach. I’m like, that’s the guy I want coming to the youth to our pro football camp.

If you could put an ad on page one of the local paper sharing your message or advice, what would it say and why?

We always emphasize that we’re teaching football skills, not only proper football skills, but we’re teaching the kids every single position on the field and that’s one that a lot of people don’t realize. They think their kid’s going to get pigeonholed because they look a certain way. We always say, I can’t tell you, the kids seven to fourteen years old, what he’s going to be size wise when he’s old enough to make his high school team, nor can I tell you what position they may need him to be at when he gets to his high school football team. There are lots of different factors in there. Early on we want to teach the kids every single position on the field. They’re going to learn how to be an offensive lineman, even though they may be extra tall and they’re best position eventually is going to be a wide receiver, but we don’t know that. Every kid’s going to learn how to properly throw the football like a quarterback. They’re going to learn that quarterback position even though they may never have the proper mindset. They may be the kid that’s best to tackle somebody. There are different ways that coaches decide eventually where they need a player and where they’re best at. We can’t always see that in that young of an age.

I think about life at pivot. You know how many people now have one job all their life, and I think the skill and appreciation from working on all the positions in the field. You may not ever be the linebacker, but you may really appreciate what the linebacker does.

Here’s what I’m going to tell you. You may be in a position with a linebacker is shoulder to shoulder with you, and if you know football at all, they talk about that all the time. You’ve got to understand what the guy besides you is doing to make sure that you’re doing your job right. Because it all works together. There are eleven players on your side of the ball at any time and it’s meant to be like an orchestra. We all work together. The best way to do that is to have the intellect. We want to teach the kids how to play every day. Every kid’s going to snap the ball. They’re going to learn what it’s like to be a center and snap the ball. That seems a lot easier as you quickly learn than it actually is.

That is not a simple job. For you, within the allocation of your time, what’s been the best allocation of your time for this organization, do you think?

For me, because I’m not the NFL athlete. My skillset is in organizing. What I try to do is to make sure that we have the best youth football coaches in place. That we have the best NFL athletes coming, from a marketing perspective. Are we out there marketing this in a way that is reaching the right target audience? We spend a lot of time passing out flyers as an example at youth football games. Why? Because that’s our target audience. We also try to hit other in the younger age group because they may start out playing soccer because that was what was available or youth basketball or youth baseball, because that was what they could do at that younger age. Some of them might be thinking about football, but they don’t even know where to start. Parents may have been soccer people but they really want to learn how to play football. We try to make sure that we get our flyers up there. That’s one example. We try to do every area of it. That’s what I try to do so that we’re doing what’s most important. What’s going to get us the biggest return for our investment.

That’s a consistent theme as the youth coaches in the NFL players. Knowing your avatar, your target market. Over the past few years what belief or protocol have you established in this company that’s helped the company most?

Do the things that only you can do. As an example, I’ll go back to my husband Craig, who’s an NFL agent. His emphasis is on getting the athletes. His emphasis is on getting the right drills and skills in place and getting the right coaches on board, because that’s what he’s good at. He doesn’t need to be over here handling the marketing because that’s where my gifting is. I’m really big on that, in identifying who needs to be doing what and doing that.

Got to give up a few things.

The other way is looking at and putting in the best team together.

For you, if there was somebody else out there that was looking at doing something like what you’re doing, what advice would you offer them?

Focus on what’s most important. Don’t try to become big overnight. If you run a great youth football camp and you think maybe this is something you want to do, all over the nation, all summer long. Worry about that after you’ve created one and done it well.

Focus on what’s most important. Don’t try to become big overnight.

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Scale after you have something to wisdom and experience done for you. What are the most common misconceptions about what you’re doing with this youth camp?

We make tons of money. That’s the biggest misconception. People go, they take the price of the camp, $99, let’s say that since that’s the discount rate, they take it times the number of kids and they’re like, man, are they making bank. That’s just not the truth. If you look at how much airfare is.

Because what they don’t know for the NFL players that you bring in, you’ve got to pay for their lodging, you pay for their airfare. How many NFL players you have at any given time?

We’ll have anywhere from ten to twelve.

I mean you think about ten to twelve guys and they’re here?

The camp is three days.

Four days of lodging, flights and all of a sudden you go. If anybody’s flown lately.

It’s so expensive. I’d love to tell you the airlines will cut us a deal, but they won’t. That’s the biggest thing. People don’t realize the cost I have to pay on insurance.

Where do you host this event?

We’ve been very blessed. The Vista Ridge High School has been gracious enough to work through all the paperwork that we need to every single year through District 49 to utilize that fields.

For you, in the day to day operation, when you’re looking at this, there’s a dialogue or self-talk that goes on for many of us. What’s yours that keeps you focused and on task?

Truly the impact. I love to tell a story to our team when we come together and I share, it was from a few years ago. A few weeks before the camp and we’ve been working tirelessly and just seemed like the cap was going to get here and the to do list was so long. We had one of our sponsors who is going to host some of the kids that they were sponsoring for the scholarship program. They were hosting some scholarship kids for dinner at their restaurant and they had invited us to come. I was like, “Come on, let’s go.” Everybody’s like, “I could really use the next two hours to bang through my TV.” I was like, “No, let’s go. Let’s take a break here and let’s go.” We went there and we were so fed by the stories of these scholarship kids and their parents and what this meant to them for this opportunity to go to this camp, and how grateful they were. All of a sudden, we had a new hop in our step. We had a new outlook on why we were doing what we were doing and that it was going to be appreciated.

I think about sometimes you get in the weeds. Then somebody comes around and remind you and you go, “I like the weeds, we’re out here, we’ll do this more.” It feeds the soul for sure. If they want to find you, they can find you on LinkedIn, right?

I’m on LinkedIn. We have our own website, ProFootballCamp.com.

Some of us have quotes that resonate for us. What’s a quote that resonates for you?

One of my favorite quotes is the difference between ordinary and extraordinary, if you think about the word ordinary, think about the word extraordinary is that little extra.

Like the people that win the Olympics, they don’t win by being twice as fast. Just a little extra.

If you do that over time it changes the course of everything that happens to you. That little extra applies to everything you do. Are you giving extra effort? Are you giving the extra time? Are you giving the extra little bit you have to do for excellence?

If you think about so many of the athletes, the Tiger Woods of some time ago, where they go after if he played around the golf driving range. You hear about the football players, what they do if they’re not throwing, or who’s the coach on the East Coast, professional coach? Now he was the film coach and that’s all he did. He sees much film after film after film for so long toiling because nobody else wanted to do it.

Belichick.

I’m not much of a football person, you can tell. You think about all of those pieces and pretty soon the muscle memory. For me, the military taught me to get up early and it’s a lifelong habit. By the time most people are getting up, I have hours on them.

Here’s another football example, Tom Brady. We’ve had a number of players that have played with him on the Patriots and they say, I swear by this, they will say that like, you won’t believe this, but on the plane ride back, so he’s just finished a game, win or lose. He’s already watching game film for the next opponent for the next week.

Pro Football Camp: If you do things over time it changes the course of everything that happens to you. That little extra applies to everything you do.

I think about professional routine. So much of life is discipline and routine and I know the definition of discipline is not just so much fun.

No. It’s never any fun but the results are fun and that’s why we do it.

If I was to talk to colleagues, what would they say that you’re best at and how to use that strength on a daily basis?

One of the things that I’m best at is learning because I’m always learning, at least I’m trying to always learn. The second thing is I’m an encourager.

It’s an interesting thing when people, when they take notes and folks are typically flattered if you write down something they say, whether it’s worthwhile or not. You think about just the discipline to do that stuff, and I think that’s important.

You’re always learning when you write it down, your brain just learned it a second time and then by the fact that it’s written down, now I can learn it a third time.

I think about as you were all inundated with so much data. Then you try to get back there and go, “What was that note about?” I can’t tell you how much I appreciate hearing about your efforts with success and moving the needle for a bunch of these kids.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Our goal was to make an impact on the community. I humbly believe that has happened and not by anything that we’ve done, but by the people that we bring out to share what they are really good at.

You would never know about the impact. These kids will say, “I learned this discipline years ago,” and I’m good and made that part of how I’m going to raise my kids. Pebble in the pond. Teddi, thanks so much.

Thank you.

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About Teddi Domann

Experienced Chief Marketing Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the national and international marketing and advertising industry. Strong marketing professional skilled in Digital Strategy, Nonprofit Organizations, Event Management, Media Relations, Brand Marketing, Business Plan Development and Management.