Hello everyone, I trust that all is well. We are in the middle of our fifth week of the 2011 winter workouts and we have come up with the theme "Finish." In the past few seasons, we have come really close to winning a PFL Championship but we need to Finish the job. We wanted to set an challenging and measurable goal for the winter and we came up with 210 team personal records in the weight room. This is not an easy task as we are all getting a lot stronger which will make max week very trying. But I trust our team will rise to the occasion and really embrace the Finish theme by reaching our goal.
In regards to the Africa trip, we are continuing to fund raise and get money in. The departure date is getting closer and I can tell the team is getting anxious. Earlier this week, coaches sent out email addresses of Conadeip players to us so we can start communicating with players in another part of the world. This is exciting to me because these are men our age that share the same love for the game as we do but in a totally different culture and language! I am excited to start getting to know some of these players as we will eventually be playing them and reaching the top of Mount Kilimanjaro with them.

Thanks for reading, more blogs will come soon!

Jim Nelson #13

We are all looking forward to the Africa trip, but many of us are looking forward to different experiences more than others. I doubt too many of us are looking forward to mile 10 of our climb but that summit is going to carry with it a bond stronger than any we have experienced before. The experience of a lifetime is in the near future for the men on this football team. I personally cannot think of something that has made me more excited about being a Drake football player than the ideas of what might come from this trip. I imagine in the thrill of teaching the kids who have never seen the game of American football. They are confused at a football’s shape, want to dribble the football with their feet and refuse to pick it up with their hands (which will likely bring a lot of inaudible laughter). I can’t even anticipate the sense of accomplishment that I will have having finished a wing to the children’s orphanage and in summating the tallest mountain in Africa. The thrill of competition between two teams, two countries, on National television will probably make the fall in Drake Stadium seem dull.  But I, if I am truly honest with myself, imagine the most exciting promise of the trip lies in the Safari. I have always been someone fascinated by nature, by animals, by African culture as a whole. The freedom and naturalistic world on the plains of Africa, in the removal from humanity, will hold with it a beauty that will captivate me, and many of my other teammates, and forever give us a hunger for a more natural world.

            Eugene “EJ” Walter 97

The thing I'm looking forward to most about Africa is helping the orphanage out and putting on the football clinics for the children of Moshi. I have been very fortunate and very blessed by the Lord, and can't wait to give back to the children at the orphanage. Although I might not be the most handy person in the world, I believe we will have a blast on any of the projects that we will complete in Moshi. I think both of these projects will provide some humbling experiences in which each football player will not forget. We have such an opportunity to learn about the city of Moshi, and I hope to learn as much about the Tanzanian culture as I can. It will be very interesting to see how the kids of Moshi will respond to seeing an American football. The children of Moshi are only familiar with soccer, so it will be quite interesting seeing what they make of it. I'm hoping that we have over a 1,000 kids for each clinic. I think the kids will have one of the best days ever with our team. Helping out another culture has been my number one goal about this trip, and this goal will achieved in May. I'm so pumped for the adventure that we will embark on.

Thanks,

Pat Cashmore #30

The event I'm most looking forward to on this trip is football game against the All-Star Mexico team. As a competitor what better competition is there than an all-star team from another country? In a way it is a way to test our skill level against other nations, even if it's only one team. And if that's not enough, this game will be played in the motherland of Africa. Not many professional players can say that they had played a football game in Africa. And if I still need more to look forward to this game might be televised on ESPN and the Discovery Channel meaning everyone in this country will be watching. It's hard to look forward to anything else after considering these facts.

Denzel Ray