Okay guys! The 2005 camp photo page is up! http://www.linemeninc.com/photos.html This includes the team photo and award photo’s. We have finally gone through the hundreds of photo’s taken at the camp and selected the best for this year’s slide show. The disc’s have been mailed to our web site manager and we hope to see them up within the next two weeks. Much thanks to Ray Reinders and to Tim Tabke of Phoenix Productions in Santa Clara, Ca., for their time and imaginative shots. Tim came up with the gladiator poster type shot you see when you first visit the site. We might even develop that into a purchasable poster. Let me know what you think!

Well, our school summer conditioning camp has ended as well as the four day full contact camp we held in mid July. This next week we have off and on August 1st, school starts for us. Take advantage of every opportunity to improve yourselves, gentlemen. When the season starts you will be out of time, so, make the time now. And let us know what you think of the photos, the camp or even this blog. In case you’re counting, only 338 days to LinemenInc 2006!

Hang in there guys, we’re working on posting photos from this year’s camp. Coach Reinders and I met today with one of our three photographers to get things started. This year’s team photo is already up and next to come will be the Champion Gladiator and college coaches photos. Within a few weeks we should have this year’s slide show up and running. We have several hundred photos to sift through, so hang in there and keep checking back. In case you were wondering, only 359 days to LinemenInc 2006!

After receiving numerous complaints from readers who were unable to post a comment after reading a blog, I am pleased to announce that the problem has been solved. Just click on the word comments and then click on post a comment. Next you will have to register but this is very easy and is only for our protection and you are under no obligation. Okay, feel free to fire away!

I am exhausted but it’s a good exhaustion. The last three days have been both an emotional as well as a physical high. I’m struggling with the idea of writing this article. I want to be sure to translate onto paper the experience of LinemenInc 2005 but I’m not sure I can do it justice. Regardless, here is my best effort.

Day one of camp is always full of anticipation and uncertainty as well as a million fires that light up and need putting out. Players forgetting to bring their final payment, coaching and player substitutions at the last minute, missing room keys, flooding toilets, finding the hose bib for water and realizing we didn’t bring enough hose, “I forgot my cleats coach can you run me to Big 5?” “What do you mean you’re already locked out of your room?” and my forgetting to tell about half of the players that they could order pizza for a late night snack. And let’s not forget how I forgot to put on a hat and ended up with a face the color of a fire engine!

Settled into their rooms the players slowly make their way out, receive camp decorum instructions and head for the field and the first practice. There was a lot of whistle blowing and coaches yelling and players running in every direction, and scanning 360 degrees the eye captured nothing but bodies in motion. Camp had officially gotten under way. We were rolling down the freeway at about 50 mph and headed towards 100! Spirits were high and the player’s faces reflected the joy and excitement they were experiencing. It felt good to get that first practice under our belts.

As camp progressed, the players and coaches alike got down to the serious business of hard work. Very quickly it became evident that this was going to be the most intense three days of their lives. Mother Nature didn’t disappoint us either: Temperatures were in the mid 80’s on Monday and steadily pushed into the 90’s by camps’ end on Wednesday. Regardless, spirits were always high.

By Tuesday night the preliminary work had been completed and at the last practice of the day the “Coaches Invitational” was held. This is a prelude to the Championship Rounds, which are held at the last practice of camp. Through five practices, coaches have been both working with and evaluating players. Now comes the first test. By invitation, coaches select players to match up in one-on-one competitions against other coach’s player selections. It was quite comical to watch these coaches trying to strategize against each other as they pitched players into the arena. The roar of the crowd watching these gladiators battle could be heard all across the campus. And later that night in-group, everyone was talking about the competitions.

The high school coaches who attended LinemenInc 2005 were treated to their own camp during the non-practice time. Darrell Funk from Colorado State, did a great job of putting on an Offensive Line clinic while Jim House from San Diego State, gave another stellar performance with the Defensive Line clinic. Many of the coaches I spoke with afterwards said they obtained so much more from these smaller more personal clinics, than they ever got from the large conventions they have attended. They especially enjoyed going from the clinic to the practice field and getting to apply this knowledge in a practical setting, along side of the coaches who had just provided the instruction.

Wednesday morning, the last day of camp, began with rising temperatures already in the 80’s and rising hopes in the chests of players. I held up a wooden gladiator sword for all to see. This was the prize, the physical, tangible prize that the boys were working towards. The bigger prize, the real prize was of course their own personal growth as both players and young men and I told them so. At the Championship Rounds that afternoon everything moved at a fevered pitch. The effort put out by these guys was tremendous and win or lose, they all knew they had accomplished something special. It didn’t matter whether they had won a sword or not. They all became champions the minute they walked into camp on day one. Just the fact that they made the decision to improve themselves, to be challenged, to take a chance and to endure, made each and everyone of them a champion.

Check out was hurried with players and coaches alike rushing to make flights and to begin the long drive’s home. And while I am sure most of these kids slept all the way home, I hope when they got up today, as they padded around the comfort of home, for just a moment they thought about the last three days and quietly thought, wow. I also hope they take what they learned in camp and pass it on to their teammates who were unable to attend. You have to give something back to the game, gentlemen.

LinemenInc 2005 is over and as sentimental as it sounds, I won’t forget it. There is something special, something innately good about watching and helping young men grow and realize they can accomplish any goal set for them through hard work and perseverance. I personally take pride in what we have accomplished and I am motivated to go forward and do the work that lay ahead.

A special thanks to the following people for without their time, support, dedication and effort, none of this would be possible: My wife, Karin, my partner Dave Reinders and his wife, Kathy, my father Larry and his brother, Harry and my son, Jeff. Jim House, Darrell Funk, Jeff Hammerschmidt, Max Glowacki, Rich James, Matt Diskin, Preston Walrath, and Aaron Thigpen, who are all outstanding coaches and excellent examples of what a man should be. To Jennifer Heinz, our physical trainer. To Tim Tabke, Ray Reinders and Mitch Kell for their sacrifice and their savvy and inventiveness with a camera. For taking care of us, the staff at the University of the Pacific. And finally, to the high school coaches and players, for without you guys we would be nothing but an idea. God bless.

Back in December, we put together the new brochure for this year’s camp. Then we updated the web site with all the new information. In January, we traveled to Irvine, for the All Sports Clinic and were in San Francisco the following week, for the Nor Cal version. February saw us starting the mailers to every high school in six states and traveling to Seaside High for a personal appearance. I followed that up in March with personal telephone calls to coaches at too many high schools to count. April was full of follow-up phone calls and filling requests for additional brochures and registration forms as well getting the promotional tape out. In May the registration forms started coming in and we went to the Samoan Athletes in Action Camp. And now it’s June.

The rooms have been booked, the menu selected, the practice jersey’s ordered. The daily practice schedules are together and the conference speakers booked. The Gatorades have been bought and the pizza connection has been made. The T-shirts are on their way and the Champion Gladiator swords are almost finished. That’s right, this year’s champions will receive a sword. The handbooks are printed and the drive block boards are painted. The only thing left to do is the camp it self.

I’ve been on a high for about two weeks now and at the same time I feel exhausted. We have realized a 300% increase in attendance in one year. I actually had to turn away players today! It broke my heart. There will be 178 players from 34 different high schools being taught by over 40 coaches. That’s a 1:5 coach to player ratio! Where else will you find that kind of attention?

Each Garrison will have approximately 40 players. Garrison IV, the big boys garrison, will have 46 players in the 285-330 pound range! Think there’s going to be some battles over there? Yeah, I’m excited! My exhaustion is ebbing away. Camp is next week! Over the months there is this long steady build up to camp. Two weeks before it all comes to a head and the pace really quickens with tons of last minute stuff to accomplish. Then there is the camp it self and that is the ultimate high.

For three days next week we will be in football euphoria. We’ll be in all our glory. The work, the camaraderie, the challenges and the successes. The emotional atmosphere that surrounds a camp is hard to described and harder to forget. I can’t wait! How about you?
A last minute welcome to the players from the following schools: Carmel High, Carmel, CA, Edison High, Stockton, CA, Fort Bragg High, Fort Bragg, CA, La Sierra High, Riverside, CA, Maxwell High, Maxwell, CA, North High, Torrance, CA, Palisades Charter, Pacific Palisades, CA, Point Arena High, Point Arena, CA, Seaside High, Seaside, CA, Sequoia High, Redwood City, CA, Shasta High, Redding, CA, South San Francisco High, South San Francisco, CA, Tulare Western High, Tulare, CA, and Woodrow Wilson High from Long Beach, CA. Gentlemen, we’ll see you in a couple of days!

Vince Lombardi once said, “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” Those are words I have tried to live by for a long time now. They are words, an idea that I have given to my players over the years. How can anyone, after working so hard at something, just surrender, just give up? I mean, that is what surrender means: I quit. I give up. I don’t want to do this anymore. You win. Here, you do it.

The idea of quitting at something is very foreign to me. Oh I readily admit I’ve had those feelings before. I’ve been at places in my life where all I wanted to do was give in and not have to fight anymore. Times where I was exhausted with the task at hand and where the devil was tempting me to toss in the towel. However, it was at those times that another voice kicked in.

There is that voice in all of us that says, “Keep going”. Why do we listen to it when others choose not to? Perhaps it is our work ethic, maybe the fear of being called a quitter or looked down on by others. Perhaps it is just our own sheer determination to succeed, personal pride, or ego. How can you put a ton of time and effort and personal sacrifice into some endeavor and then give up? Or maybe, just maybe, it is because we know something that everyone else doesn’t. Something about ourselves that others have over looked: The fact that we are winners and winners never surrender.

For the past four to five years my wife, Karin, has been a struggling romance writer. I personally don’t read the stuff but she does. As it turns out, so do a lot of other people as over 58% of all paperback books sold are romance novels. I have watched her toil away at the keyboard night and day over the years. I’ve even acted as a technical advisor and helped with some dialog and done some editing for her. But she has always been the dominant force, refusing to back down even in the face of rejection after rejection.

There have been numerous books, varying plots and plot twists through the years, a wide variety of hero’s, heroine’s and bad guys. Too many locations to recall with too many different endings. Throughout it all there has always been one constant theme, one true idea: that she would one day write well enough to be published.

Well, almost five year’s of vigilance has finally paid off for her. Last weekend, my wife, Karin, got a two-book deal from a large, recognized publishing house. Her first book will be on the store shelf in January. Five year’s is a long time to work at anything. Especially when you are constantly faced with rejection. She has almost enough rejection letters to wallpaper a small room and yet she pushed on. Never gave up. Yes, there were the times she wanted to but one or the other of us wouldn’t allow it. No surrender. In the end, as always, to the victor go the spoils. You might want to check out www.karintabke.com.

If you have a dream, a goal, something you are working towards and the going is sometimes rough, remember that you are not the first to go down that bumpy road. Remember that anything worth having is not without sacrifice or even rejection. Sometimes the fight is long and hard and the end difficult to see, but it is there. And it is worth reaching. To surrender is to submit, to yield, to give in, and to die. Linemen are the last of the Gladiators, and linemen never surrender.

A warm welcome to the players who have recently registered for LinemenInc 2005, from the following schools: Alhambra High, Martinez, CA, Crespi Carmelite High, Encino, CA, Dayton High, Dayton, NV, Gardena High, Gardena, CA, Hug High, Reno, NV, Lassen High, Susanville, CA, Will C. Wood High, Vacaville, CA, and welcome back to Yerington High, Yerington, NV. It’s June guys; so, see you at the end of the month!