Blackmon returns home

Saturday marked a return from a five-year hiatus for the Blackmon Football Camp at Bishop Hendricken’s Ed Fracassa Field and Stadium, put on by Will Blackmon - one of Rhode Island’s most decorated football players.

Blackmon, a graduate of Bishop Hendricken High School and Boston College, enjoyed a ten-year NFL career as a safety, and won Super Bowl XLVI with the New York Giants. He is currently an assistant coach at Boston College.

Getting the camp running again, Blackmon said, was done with a bit of help from a team of around fifteen other coaches who were helping players with drills throughout the day.

“I wanted to make sure I had the right team around me - coaches that were all on the same page,” Blackmon said.

Despite getting the opportunity to learn about football from an NFL veteran, none of the kids in attendance had to pay.

That, Blackmon said, was by design to make sure that the camp was accessible to everyone.

“We do want donations, but we don’t want the parents to have to pay,” Blackmon said. “We don’t want that to be an obstacle.”

The camp was split into two sessions- a morning session for boys and girls age 7-10 and an afternoon session for boys and girls age 11-14. While the morning session was interrupted a few times by scattered downpours, the campers largely played through the conditions, and the weather cooperated for the afternoon session.

Blackmon said that around 200 local football players registered, though many did not show up because of the rain.

Though past camps had attendance upwards of 300, Blackmon said, he was happy for the smaller camp so the coaches could focus more on individual campers.

One of Blackmon’s biggest hopes from the camp was that the kids in attendance would try new things and sharpen the skills they already had. Self-improvement, he stressed, was one of the biggest focuses for both himself and for the camp’s other coaches, and teaching campers the value of it was critical.

“You can’t be afraid to lose,” Blackmon said. “You can’t be afraid of adversity.”

Razzie Smith- a first-time coach and Blackmon’s former teammate at Boston College- said that working to make the camp into a good experience for attendees meant a lot to him.

“It’s a better opportunity for especially Rhode Island kids to come together and show their skills,” Smith said. “That makes it special.”

Being able to provide kids in Rhode Island with a high-quality football camp and inspiration to continue playing football if they’re serious about it, Blackmon said, was one of the biggest reasons why he put the camp on.

“Not a lot of people come to recruit Rhode Islanders because the state’s so small,” Blackmon said. “We want to provide that positive example to these kids that I used to be in the same position as.”