Rams reach out to high school teams from Ferguson

Rams reach out to high school teams from Ferguson
• By Jim Thomas

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/professional/rams-reach-out-to-high-school-teams-from-ferguson/article_b304e7c3-da48-5cf8-88c8-17ed18ea87a7.html

McCluer North High football coach Courtland Griffin grew up in Ferguson. He once played for North.

It saddens him greatly to see the situation in his neighborhood, the unrest in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting.

“It’s extremely difficult to see a neighborhood that I once grew up in going through the changes that it’s going through right now,” Griffin said. “I can’t say it’ll be the same. Hopefully it can be.

“Hopefully the community can rebuild and come back even stronger from this. Usually when things are torn down, it’s a better rebuild. So I’m looking forward to seeing the brightness after this darkness.”

The Rams can’t make the darkness go away in Ferguson. But they are making things a little brighter for three high school football teams from the Ferguson-Florissant School District.

The school district remains closed this week because of the situation in Ferguson, where protesters remain in the streets and occasional looting and violence have taken place at night. As a result the high schools in the district had no place to practice.

So with the opening night of the high football season coming this weekend, the Rams have opened their doors to the

McCluer North Stars, the McCluer Comets and the McCluer South-Berkeley Bulldogs.

The Bulldogs couldn’t make it Wednesday, but McCluer and McCluer North were able to practice in the Rams’ indoor facility and also watch the Rams practice outside in the VIP section of bleachers at Rams Park.

“It was quite a day,” Rams coach Jeff Fisher said. “We finish up training camp, and what better way could we finish up than to invite some special guests to practice.”

After some quick brainstorming Tuesday night, the Rams invited the teams to Earth City.

“We wanted to do something,” Fisher said. “Things just fell into place. We had a lot of people work real hard to put this together. We’re fortunate that we could provide an opportunity for these young high school athletes to get away.”

Get away — and practice.

“There’s no better game than high school football, and we didn’t want them to be denied of this opportunity,” Fisher said. “So we invited them over as our guests. Looks like they had a lot of fun.”

Boy, did they. For starters, what can top practicing in a state-of-the-art NFL facility for a teen-age football player? When asked if the indoor field was to his liking, Griffin paused, laughed and replied:

“Grade A. Definitely better than where we’ve been. We’ve been in a field of crickets every night. Near a swamp. In a park.

“But we’re still practicing. I don’t know where the crickets come from. I don’t know if this is a bed of birthing crickets. But they’ve been around. They’ve been around and landed on ’em. Jumped off of ’em. They jumped off us. Whatever.”

There were no crickets Wednesday at Rams Park.

Fisher walked over and said a few words to the prep athletes before practice. But they weren’t listening, Fisher joked. They were looking at the NFL players coming onto the field.

“Look, there’s Tavon (Austin)! There’s Robert Quinn!”

And so on.

Once practice started, Fisher got the McCluer North players involved during what’s called a “backed-up” drill. The drill simulates the Rams’ offense being backed up near its own goal line, having to deal with “opposing” crowd noise near the end zone.

The North Stars played the role of the hostile crowd. They were ushered away from the VIP bleachers to the end of the field, maybe 10 feet from the Rams’ offensive huddle. Their job was to scream on every play to try to disrupt the St. Louis offense, and they did very well — there was a false start or two by the professionals.

“We had a bunch of mistakes,” Fisher said. “I wouldn’t say they were close to (the loudness of) Seattle, but they were pretty close.”

The McCluer North players got a kick out of that. The McCluer Comets were indoors practicing at this time.

But the best part came after the Rams’ practice ended. The Stars spilled out of the bleachers onto the field and started jumping and chanting — like a team would to get fired up right before a game.

Well, some of the big, bad, Rams couldn’t resist. They joined the circle of Stars in the mass huddle and started jumping and shouting, too. Particularly active were — surprise — the Bash Bros., aka Ray Ray Armstrong and Daren Bates.

Anyone who’s ever seen the Rams’ kickoff coverage unit just before the kick know Armstrong and Bates love to dance.

“Look at ’em! Look at how excited those kids are,” Griffin said.

It was unclear if Griffin was talking about his Stars, or Bates and Amstrong.

Several Rams players, including Lance Kendricks and James Laurinaitis, made their way to the periphery of the scrum and started shaking hands and greeting some of the “calmer” McCluer North players.

“They’re living in basically a chaos area right now,” Laurinaitis said. “It was awesome to see the energy that they brought out here, to be honest. It’s good stuff, man. I’m glad that we were able to help in some way, just take their mind off of what’s going on in that area.”

Actually, it was better than good stuff. Only the most callous could fail to be touched by the scene.

“I’m hardly ever speechless,” said Rams general manager Les Snead. “But this time I’m speechless.”

But it was Griffin, the rookie head coach of the Stars, who put it best.

“Strength in community,” he said. “When everyone’s backing each other, then there’s possibility for everything. You need more people like this; more organizations like these guys.

“There’s strength in community. And when people come together everything’s possible. They didn’t have to ask us to come out here. They didn’t have to reach out for us to come out here. They made it available for us. They called and reached out. That’s awesome. That’s big.”