Brian Miller
BROOMFIELD - Standing on a practice field last Friday afternoon, Legacy football coach Wayne Voorhees watched as a handful of his varsity players worked with several dozen future players at the Lightning’s annual football camp.
Voorhees was talking about the mission that he and his coaches hope to accomplish with the youth who attend the camp.
He joked that maybe now his players understand that coaching is a little more difficult than it looks.
“It gets them thinking and understanding fundamentals,” Voorhees said. “What’s kind of funny is some of them have started to see what we actually go through on a daily basis because they’ve been coaching and helping out.”
With the first official day of fall practice set for Aug. 13, the Legacy camp gets everybody into football mode.
The first game is Aug. 31 against Bear Creek at Jeffco Stadium in Lakewood.
“From the start of the summer we’ve been in that football mode,” Legacy senior-to-be Travis Baum said. “Being out here has been really getting us in the spirit.”
While Legacy has put on a football camp each summer for the past decade, this is only the fourth year of it being a contact camp.
Players ages 8-14 can attend, and while numbers were down this summer, Voorhees still estimated about 65 players attended the five-day event.
“Our biggest thing is fundamentals. We want to teach kids fundamentals,” Voorhees said. “We take the kids through every position on the football field so everybody has a chance to be a receiver, everybody has a chance to be a running back, linebacker, DB.”
A number of the players who help out came up through the camp themselves. It gives the players a chance to give back while having some fun with kids who could one day be on the Legacy roster.
“I used to come to this camp, and I feel like it helped me a lot, coming and seeing all the high schoolers here,” offensive lineman Aaron Montoya said. “It actually helped me become who I am.”
Voorhees said the young campers have a chance to connect with varsity players who they’ll watch this fall.
“They’re kind of their heroes, and they want to see them play,” Voorhees said. “The first day we had them out here with their 7-on-7 jerseys on so they could relate the kid to their number. We’re hoping some of them will come to our games and see some of our kids.”
The Lightning finished 4-6 in the 2011 season and lost in the first round of the Class 5A state playoffs to Grandview.
Despite taking some hits to graduation, Legacy returns some good talent this fall.
“We just want to be better than we have in the past,” Baum said. “We’re just trying to get a winning record and at least win that first game in the playoffs.”
“We have great talent on this team,” Montoya added. “It’s going to be great to see what we can do on the field.”
