Okay, it’s crunch time guys!  Those of you who have waited untill the last minute to get your registrations in for camp are just about out of time.  Registration forms and deposits must be in by Tuesday, June 5, 2007.

We still have space available at both camps, Long Beach State and the University of the Pacific.  However, between received registrations and those promised by coaches, Long Beach is almost filled.  So get on it!  Don’t miss out on an awesome opportunity to improve yourself.  Get out of that weight room for a few days this summer and challenge yourself.  Come to LinemenInc where we work with just Linemen, the last of the gladiators!

To download your registration form just click on this link: http://www.linemeninc.com/registration.php

By Jay Heater CONTRA COSTA TIMES   July 9, 2006  (reprinted from December 2006 blog)

Ahhh, summer camp. Those days of splashing in the lake, meeting new friends and singing around the campfire.  Unless you happen to be a high school football player.  Summer camp has taken on an entirely new meaning for teenagers who want to keep up with the competition.

Campsites have transformed from picnic tables and fireplaces to university athletic fields. Instead of sleeping in a tent, kids get a taste of dorm life. 

Camp counselors? They are high-powered college coaches and current and former NFL players. And no longer do youngsters just venture to one camp a year. Those hoping to keep up with the football Joneses have to double up, triple up, or more. “Counting the Nike Combine, I’ve gone to five camps,” said Granada High School lineman Mike Marcisz, who also attended the Arizona State, Cal and Fresno State football camps as well as the LinemenInc camp in Stockton. “I go just to get noticed. I wanted to get my name out there. Arizona State and Fresno State already have offered me (a scholarship). I am definitely interested in Cal, which is known especially for its linemen.” Marcisz understands that attending camp at a university allows him not only to get a feel for the environment, but to be exposed to the coaches whom he might be working under the next four or five years. 

He also understands that his parents have to make a substantial monetary commitment to his summertime pursuits. “You’ve got the camps, which are about $300 a pop, and for some of them, you have plane fare,” he said. “But they definitely have helped me. I have learned so much technique from having the college coaches coaching me.” Even so, Marcisz admits that he is ready to experience a few lazy summer days. “I’m tired of sleeping in tiny beds,” he said. “I’m 6-foot-5 and I’ve been sleeping in tiny beds for a month straight. It’s tough on the body.” Camp was tough on Liberty High lineman Jay Martin in a different way. Martin sprained his knee at Fresno State’s camp, which prevented him from participating in the live drills at the LinemenInc camp. 

Still, he thought it was important that he attend LinemenInc because both the Fresno State and Cal offensive and defensive line coaches were instructing. He also wanted to get all the important training and conditioning information that the camp provides. “These camps really help you get out there and see what kind of competition you are facing,” Martin said. “It also gives college coaches a chance to see you. Then it helps me with my fundamentals.” Martin attended the first LinemenInc camp, which was started in 2004 by his current Liberty High head coach, Dave Reinders, and Granada defensive line coach Gary Tabke. The LinemenInc camp isn’t set up just to cater to high-profile players. Tabke said the camp’s focus is to produce quality high school linemen. However, Martin believes that top players feel some pressure to attend camps. 

“The top coaches are out there. and if you don’t show up, they probably are wondering why you aren’t there,” said Martin, who is 6-foot-2, 285 pounds. At LinemenInc, Martin was exposed to coaches from Cal, Fresno State and Sacramento State, among others. “You see how they coach, and what they do,” he said. “They all have different ways of doing things.” Tabke and Reinders saw the exploding business of summer football camps and decided to tap into the specialized market. “There are all kinds of football camps for skill players, but nothing West of the Mississippi that specialized in linemen,” Tabke said. “All great teams begin with lines.” 

LinemenInc drew 58 players its first year in 2004, 175 last year and 240 this year. Tabke created a Web site (www.linemeninc.com) that has generated a lot of interest. Business is booming at other camps as well. Cal added a kicking camp to its regular camp last year. “We were the only school in the Pac-10 to have a kicking camp last year, and this year there were four or five kicking camps,” former Cal and NFL kicker Doug Brien said. “Stanford scheduled its camp the same weekend as ours.” Cal‘s kicking camp grew from 42 kids in 2005 to 50 this year, and Brien expects that number to increase again next year. 

“Football camp has turned into a big business,” said Brien, who also runs a nationwide kicking combine series (www.kicking.com) that allows high school football players a chance to audition for colleges. “Parents are doing anything they can to get their kids into a good school.”. Camps line up attractive staffs to pack in the kids. Besides Brien, the Cal camp featured former NFL and Cal kicker Mick Luckhurst along with former Cal punter Mike Ahr, who was Luckhurst’s holder at Cal. Former Cal punter Tyler Fredrickson taught along with former Bears kicker Mark Jensen and current Cal special teams coach Pete Alamar. Tabke said he has been flooded with inquiries from many college coaches about the chance to teach, and to be exposed, to the campers at LinemenInc. LinemenInc has taken off so quickly that Tabke said a second camp will be added in Southern California next year. 

“It terms of a business, we are experiencing great growth and success,” Tabke said. “Our five-year plan was to have two camps, and our 10-year plan was to start selling franchises. In this day and age, things are becoming so specialized and everyone is looking to gain an edge.”  

 

Just a friendly reminder folks, that LinemenInc Camps registration is due in just two weeks.  That’s right, June 5. 

Wow!  June is just ten days away.  It always amazes me how quickly we get back to it every year.  Most of you are in the middle of or just starting spring ball.  In no time at all school will break for the summer and summer conditioning and practices will begin.

Have you put yourself in a position to be ready for it?  Are you getting the most out of what you are doing now to maximize your results?  In a previous blog I said that, “the same amount of effort will always end in the same results.”  Those words have never been more true than when applied to athletics.

A high school football player I know recently commented on some fellow teammates that have received a few letters of inquiry from a few colleges.  This young man has always been a starter and even mentioned in his local papers from time to time.  He said, “I want letters too.”  I had to ask him what he was doing different this year in preparing for the coming season in order to be in a position to receive “letters”.

He immediately stated he had been to most of the off-season weight training sessions at his school.  “Most?” I inquired, “Why haven’t you been to every one of them?”

“No one has made every one of them.” He answered.

“Are you just anyone?”  I asked him.  “Do you just want every day run of the mill results or are you looking for something more.  Didn’t you say you too wanted to receive college letters?”

If you only apply the same amount of effort and don’t go the extra distance in your preparation, then don’t be surprised when you don’t arrive where you thought you should. 

Team camps are great and a solid ingredient to a successful team.  If a high school team and it’s players can only afford to attend one camp, it should be a team camp.  However, they are “team camps” and focus more on the team’s growth and rightfully so. 

LinemenInc is an individual camp and we focus on the individual.  You, as an individual, are in charge of your personal growth and advancement.  You have to take a personal interest in where you are going and how you plan to get there.  If you as an individual are improved then so is your team by benefit of your growth.  This applies to coaches as well as players.  We all need to continually work on self improvement and self advancement. Not only to personally benefit but so that we might share that growth and improvement with others thereby helping them to improve.

Again, just a friendly reminder, LinemenInc Camp registrations are due June 5.  Just click on this link to download yours… http://www.linemeninc.com/registration.php

You are the best player on your team.  You are the best player in your league.  You’ve been a three year starter and gotten all league or all county honors.  Your coach thinks you’re great.  Your parents can’t stop telling everyone how fabulous you are.  Even the local sportswriter loves you.

You are one of hundreds, maybe thousands of best team, league and county players from across this great country.  You are but one fish in a giant sea of fish.

Let’s speak plainly.  Too many kids across this land get their heads filled with the accolades of others.  They start to believe their own press.  Their head coach is a role model so he must be telling the truth.  Your parents wouldn’t lie to you and that reporter must surely know what he is writing about.  By God you must be a D-1 candidate.

Certainly, some of you are.  I was fortunate to have coached such a candidate last year.  However, he was the only one we had on our team and it had been about five or six year’s since our program had seen one.  Many programs never see one.

Many of you will go on to play at a junior college and then hang up your cleats.  Those who do not may go on to play on a NAIA team or perhaps a D-3 team.  A few will even go onto play at a D-2 and even fewer still might make it to a D-1 school from a JC.  Fewer still will go right out of high school to a D-1. More might make it to a D-2 or D-3 right out of high school.  Even then there is no guarantee that you will make the team or make the team and play.

It isn’t just about your football talent.  You need grades, kid.  You need a decent SAT or ACT.  You need to have stayed out of trouble and have little or no baggage with you.  The first stop a recruiter makes on campus is to the counseling office, not the coach’s office.  You see, that recruiter may only need one or two players this year and he isn’t going to waste his time on a problem or a project when there are so many others in better shape.

What makes you think you are that one or two he is looking for?  Have you put in the extra time in the classroom to ensure good or great grades?  Have you hung out with the right crowd and avoided the pitfalls of high school life?  Have you taken care of your body or polluted it?  Were you the one with all that talent who thought talent alone was all you were going to need?  Take a look around your own program or league.  Did the guys you thought were great make it?

I want for you all to have the opportunity to extend your playing time past high school.  The truth of the matter is that many of you will never play after graduation.  That is why high school is so important from a playing aspect.  If it is going to be the last time you get to put on the pads, make the most of it.  Get as much of it as you can.  Make yourself some long lasting memories.  Prepare for this and your remaining seasons like never before.  Do that, and you will also be preparing for the rest of your life.

If you are a parent or a high school coach reading this, be realistic with your sons and players.  Keep them on the straight and narrow for life and the football will take care of itself.  Provide them with realistic, obtainable goals and they will be more successful and happier in life.  Teach them to prepare for both their triumphs and their failures.

Oh yeah, and get them to a LinemenInc camp this summer.  Registration is due June 5^th.

Today is May 6^th; in just 30 day’s registration forms for LinemenInc 2007 are due and LinemenInc Long Beach is in just 46 day’s.  46 days!  Less than seven weeks!  Are you ready?  Have you made your summer plans and circled the important dates on your calendar?  Have you done your fundraising?  Are you in shape, I mean football shape and condition?

There is a lot to do in preparation for attending a summer camp.  Far more than just filling out your paperwork and sending in your deposit.  Let’s start with the body:  If you haven’t been in the weight room now is the time and time is running out.  Most high school teams are about to begin Spring Ball.  Spring Ball is not the time to get into condition; it is the time to learn new offenses, new defenses, new reads and adjustments.  It is the time to reacclimate with coaches and fellow players and the opportunity to make a new and fresh impression.  That having been said you should have already been in the weight room or need to get there now. 

Conditioning is what will get you through your camps as well as your practices and to the end of the game.  Jogging, wind sprints and get off work are vital to your success.  Try doing your conditioning in your bare feet.  We spend a lot of time working all the other muscles in our body but do nothing for the feet.  It is the feet that have to carry us, not our legs, which must be strong, but our feet.  Running bare foot helps to build “foot strength” and is vital to the overall endurance of the leg system.  If you don’t believe me, check in with speed coach and World Class sprinter, Aaron Thigpen, over at www.gamespeed.net.  

Getting packed:  Whatever you do, don’t forget to pack lots of clean socks and chonies.  Chonies, you know, under pants.  The two things that will knock you off of your feet are blisters and jock itch or chaffing.  So, pack plenty of clean dry stuff and change it between every practice.  A little Gold Bond powder in your bag is also a good idea. 

I see our web site get hits from all over the country everyday.  People living in Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Alaska, Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, Louisiana, Arizona, South Carolina, Ohio, Montana, Idaho, Connecticut and Tennessee, and I wonder, are you guys just looking or really interested in improving?  We have already received registrations from kids in New Jersey and Iowa.  I know it’s a trip and an expense but I guarantee it will be an experience like none other and a benefit.  Besides, we’re in California and you can always take a vacation after camp. 

Okay, it is crunch time guys.  You need to get your registration forms and deposits mailed in.  Schools already with players signed up for LinemenInc 2007 are: Chaparral, Cleveland, De La Salle, Granite Hills, Hanford West, Hemet, Hoover, Laguna Creek, Liberty, Liberty Christian, Livermore, Los Altos, Maranatha, Otay Ranch, Palo Verde Blythe, WWP-South in Princeton, N.J., Summit, Venice, Woodside and Yuba City.  That clock is ticking… T-minus 30 days and counting… Click here to download your registration form  http://www.linemeninc.com/registration.php