Community Service

Hello bloggers! This week I just want to talk a little about our community service that we do as a team. One of our five team goals is being Impact Men. This is something that we take very serious and it involves us giving back to the community we represent. Every week during winter workouts and the fall season, we have players visiting Blank's Childrens Hospital to try and make a difference in the lives of young children who are not as blessed as we are. Going there has a huge impact in our lives and theirs. We also have players go to different elementary schools around Des Moines and read to kids and stress the importance reading will have in their lives. Other than that, if there is anything we can do just to help people around our community, we are always glad to help. None of this is mandatory, we all do it as strictly volunteer events because we believe we need to give back to our community because of the people with less than us and to show our thanks for their support. Anyways, spring ball is getting ready to end with our spring game next weekend and everyone has improved greatly. Thanks for following and your continued support. As always, GO BULLDOGS!



Jim Nelson

Drake University

Marketing and Entrepreneurial Management

Drake Football

Pi Kappa Alpha

(630)253-8099



Community service is a huge part of our program. I have positive memories of every community service project. It is a way to give our time to help people. Our program focuses on not being selfish, but being selfless. How can we better someone's life? I think its amazing how our football team contributes to local clubs, hospitals, and school. This experience has been positive for me, and has made me very blessed.

I have mainly worked with Boys and Girls Club and the Wilkie House. Both are after school programs to help kids with homework, and to keep them busy. I enjoy learning about the kids, and they do a great job of making me laugh. It is always fun when you return a week later, and a child remembers your name. I always try to beat the kids in basketball and pool. I also have been to the Blank Children's Hospital. We always meet some tough children who are battling for their lives. Africa is going to be a great opportunity to give back to this orphanage. I think this will be a life changing event for the entire team. It may be the first time that our athletes witness poverty. Its important that we enjoy the kids at the orphanage as well. They are going to want to play, and I think our players will have blast with them. I can't imagine what they will do when they see a football.

Football's Impact on My Life: Past, Present, and Future.

            My name is Eugene Walter. I am a Drake University football player, and someday very soon I am going to be a part of a historical moment in football history because the Drake University bulldogs are going to be playing the first American football game on the continent of Africa. I am going to document our team’s journey from the floor of the Killibowl stadium, where our team will compete against an all-star team from Mexico, to the tip of mount Kilimanjaro that we will summit with them.

            Football has been a driving force in my life since I was a child. I can remember when my mother took me to my first football game. My eyes—captivated by the competition and excitement of the game—glued to the action as I watched Marcus Allen dive over a wall of red and gold. At the time I had no idea why the stadium erupted the way it did when he jumped over that pile. But from then on football would always be a part of who I was. I set the goal of playing on weekends for that hometown team in the distant future. I fantasized about myself throwing off tacklers by diving into couch cushions and running through the neighbors’ hedges. It was not until I first started football, around third grade, that I realized that it wasn’t going to be easy. I learned that the people that are fortunate enough to play this great game for millions of fans were not given anything, they had to work for it. And from then on I did whatever I could to be the best. My drive was that I had to be the best at everything. Sprints, I had to be first, class projects had to be A’s, teams for any activity, I had to win. All that work has lead me to here-Drake University, where I have decided to study writing and psychology and where I spend all other energy chasing the hope of playing on a weekend.

            Coming into Drake University I was an undersized defensive lineman. Six feet, Two hundred pounds, as a tackle at the division 1 level, is a difficult obstacle to overcome. I worked hard but still could not get much weight to stick to my body. I got faster, stronger, but still going into my sophomore year is when I heard of the trip to Africa. I was no closer to being the player I needed to be. I remember leaving the meeting, where Coach Creighton announced the trip to Tanzania, thinking that perhaps my dream of playing on that big stage will happen after all. I had been accepting of my role as someone who worked as hard as they could to make the people around them better. I received my recognition for being a hard working and selfless guy by players and coaches alike. But I was never able to give up the hope that someday I would earn my spot on the field.

            I found myself with a new goal. Those distant dreams of NFL glory had been replaced by more idealistic fantasies of being a father and husband. But this trip was real. I was going to be a part of a great moment in football history. Though this trip means a lot more to me than just historic precedence. Tanzania is the culmination of my commitment to this school, this team, this sport, and my family. This trip is in: every morning I wake up before the sun cracks the frostbitten ground of Iowan winter, every time I get hit by an offensive lineman almost twice my size, every time I sneak away from my friends to get an extra workout, each time I sit in my car, listening to the radio on hearing my team play halfway across the United States.

            I suppose what means so much to me about this trip is not the chance that I might play but that it will be something regenerative about it. We are doing far more than just playing a game. We are not just introducing a sport to a country. We are teaching something we love to kids that might forget the rules eventually of American football but the impact of the men teaching, my football family who have been molded by this great game, will leave an impression on those children that will last and affect them and us for the rest of our lives. Some might feel that the manifestation of this trip will be in the orphanage wing we will help build while we are there, or in the climb up the mountain with the Mexican all-star team, or the television special, or the game broadcast, and in part they’d all be right. But I can tell you for us, as the players, our greatest excitement comes from being a part of something greater than ourselves. The initial attraction of the game in: the glory, the competition, the sportsmanship, the selflessness, the parts that make up the greater whole that make us work harder and harder each day.

           

           

Thank you for reading.

Eugene “EJ” Walter #97

Drake University

Department of Arts and Sciences

Eugene.walter@drake.edu            

Class on Leadership

Spring ball is halfway done and the spring semester is flying by. The climb is looming and as a team we are doing a lot to prepare. Most of the guys who are going on the trip are taking a class about leadership qualities and emotional awareness with emphasis on the activities that we will be doing in Africa. In the class we have heard from speakers, most of which who have climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, who shared any number of things dealing with the obstacles of our trip. From breaching a communication gap to attempting to teach a very complicated sport to kids who have never seen it before, and pushing a group of 100 or so people, some very large, up a very tall mountain.

Something that really stuck with me from our course was when a Peaks 4 Poverty representative, Native of Tanzania, from our own Drake Campus, came in to tell us both about the climb, which he had done twice to raise money and draw attention to the struggle of the poverty stricken in the world, and about the people and culture of Tanzania. In hearing about the people that the football teams would be experiencing I became overwhelmed with the awareness of just how big of a deal this trip was. We are going to be making lifetime memories and impressions on these kids, some of whom will not have shoes or access to clean water. I realized that all the people who came into the classroom to tell me how this trip would change me forever weren’t just talking about the accomplishment of the first game in Africa or climbing a mountain, they were talking about the people.



Eugene “EJ” Walter



There are many things that each individual is doing to prepare for Africa. I'm making sure that I have all the necessary gear that will allow me to climb the mountain. I got my hiking boots in January and have been breaking them in ever since. Now I'm just trying to utilize friends and family friends who have hiking experience, and that might provide some gear for me. I'm very fortunate to have an Uncle who has climbed to over 19,000 feet on Mount Everest. He has provided some good insight about what to expect from climbing, and how I should prepare. I have been walking daily, and just trying to do the movements that I will be doing on the mountain. Along with the gear, I have had to make sure that I have all the proper shots. I received for shots over spring break, and I think I have two left to receive. Two documentaries that I have watched are making me intimidated by this mountain. I just don't know how my body is going to react to the elevation change. The anticipation keeps building the closer we get to this trip.



Thanks for reading,

Pat Cashmore #30