Jake Plummer tosses football with Ak-Chin youth

Kids in the Ak-Chin Indian Community showed off their football skills Wednesday, when the Arizona Cardinals’ youth football program and Jake Plummer led them through drills.

Acting as an emissary for the Super Bowl Host Committee, Jake Plummer, former quarterback for Arizona State University and the Arizona Cardinals, said he was on hand to have fun and help out communities he used to call home.

“I spent 10 years of my life down here with Arizona State and the Cardinals. Then I went to Denver and just kind of disappeared.”

Around 30 children of the Ak-Chin Community participated in the mini-camp that took the kids through an hour-long set of stretches, drills and football skills.

“I’m just here to help out and play some catch with the little kids. That’s the good stuff,” Plummer said. “I’m going to chat with the kids and the parents about the importance of education, eating right and staying active. If I can help one person out, I feel it matters.”

Starting with stretching, Coach Mo Streety, Arizona Cardinals’ youth football manager, circled the kids up and ran through a series of warm-ups with Plummer in the mix.

The warm-ups also gave the kids a chance to ask Plummer questions. While many had him talking about the memorable games in his career, one child stood up and asked, “Did you know Pat Tillman?”

Speaking on the work ethic and leadership of his late teammate Tillman, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2004, Plummer said Tillman was an incredibly hard worker and someone to look up to as a role model.

“I played with Pat for three-years at ASU and four-years on the Cardinals. He would have loved to see you guys out here playing today. Pat would have loved this.”

After a few more stretches, the kids were divided into groups and ran to field to start running drills. The camp featured stations set up with diving mats, cones and tackling pads, where the kids are ran through a series of five-minute stations.

For 45-minutes they ran, jumped, threw and caught passes from Cardinals staff and Plummer himself.

“We’re here to support the Super Bowl Host Committee. This is our kickoff event,” Streety said.

As the Cardinals youth football manager, Streety and his team run events for programs like Play 60 and Heads Up Football, which promote healthy lifestyles and safety for kids through football. This was a smaller group for Streety, who said there can more than 100 kids in a single camp.

“We do these types of camps every week, about 60 to 75 events a year,” he said.

Such events also help get kids interested in Cardinals football. When he first started working for the Cardinals, Streety said there wasn’t a strong fan base in the city, especially among the young.

“It really lets kids be a part of the Cardinals organization,” Streety said.

The mini-camp was the first hosted by the Super Bowl Host Committee and one of a variety of events to be held in the Phoenix area during the next 10-months leading up to Super Bowl XLIX.

“Ak-Chin is one of our partners for the Super Bowl and one of their goals was to use this platform to help the kids by promoting good health,” said Joe Hickey, vice president of partnership sales and activation with the Super Bowl Host Committee. “Events like this stimulate the kids and get them to want to be active.”

Hickey said more camps and other events are in the works leading up to the Super Bowl.

“One of our committee’s missions is to get out and help the community,” he said. “It’s not about football. It’s about getting out there and getting active. These kids were out here with the Cardinals and were catching passes from Jake Plummer. They won’t forget that.”  

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