The Loud Americans: Jimmy Update

The Super Bowl brought many things to Minneapolis and one of them was the Sound Mind Sound Body Combine Experience.

This is basically a recruiting company for the NFL. It was a morning of instruction and how to prepare ones self to become a recruit in the college football area, then what you needed to do to continue into the NFL, it was eye opening. Then the afternoon was forming position teams and one on one drills with NFL trainers and then the regular conditioning test, vertical jump, standing long jump, 40 yard dash and the side to side drill. This is all basic football speak...

We headed downtown for the morning session which was a cluster. These people running the program are not from around here and didn't know how to deal with the snow storm that was happening, so in a panic they started the program early it was to start at 11:30 but they started it at 11:00 and of course all the local wandered in at 11:25 and it was chaos. Kids getting weighed in presenters trying to talk to the crowd while kids are being shuttled in and out so ...yeah a cluster.

The morning session ended and in the midst the storm a few hundred people had to get from downtown town Eden Prairie good luck. Being the safe Minnesotans we took the back roads stopped for lunch and were still the first ones there. Champions Hall is a big indoor sports facility which has an indoor football field. The plan was to do the drills and then break out not groups and do the one on one drills. That didn't happen.

The people in charge of the technology for the tests were late and then their equipment didn't work so the organizers change the events and the one on one's are first. This was about a 2 hour drill/ training where the different teams, i.e the running backs, the line backers, the wide receivers, the safeties, the quarterbacks and the O-Line and D-line face off against each other.

Jimmy was in the line backer group and they were against the running backs in one drill and the wide receivers in another. He weighed in a 214 lbs and at 6.2. He was pretty good at defending the running backs and keeping them out of the end zone. He got beat deep once or twice by the wide receivers however he managed to catch up with them and keep them from scoring.

Tracy came down late in the day after shuttling Billy around to his TKD duty and was able to see some of the drills. Watch these big O-linemen and D-linemen going at it was scary. One of the kids dislocated his shoulder and this was just for fun!

All the players were not happy when after a 2 hour workout they then had to take the conditioning tests. Jimmy was not happy with his scores but once he heard all the other kids complaining there scores were better than whet they got in this test he felt better. Each kid had a wristband that kept track of their times, jumps movements, etc and at the end of the day the kids would turn these in and get evaluated. By this point Tracy and I were starving so we left Jimmy there to finish up and change and we headed out to eat. We met up with him back home later and had stopped at Chipotle and bought a triple meat and double rice burrito which the clerk was refusing to make for him, he somehow persevered. His final commit on the camp was " I am glad I went, I found out I'm right where I need to be conditioning wise and strength wise"

Drill 1
Drill 2
Drill 3
Drill 4

The Sadie Hawkins Dance is next up for Jimmy. He was invite by Allison a friend of his and of course he said yes. There was a big group of kids going together each had a date but they were going as friends as opposed as "dates".

Jimmy was bound and determined to have the best facial hair at the dance, you can be the judge.

The kids all met at one of the girls house and shockingly we as parents were invited to the picture taking event!
Noah and James were there as well two of Jimmy's long time and close friends as well as Baker, his name is Noah as well but everyone just calls him Baker (which is his last name)
The kids then headed off to a local restaurant for dinner. The dance was in the High School and we were not allowed, by Jimmy, to attend, He had a blast and said it was really fun.

So, Jimmy is having the quintessential high school experience.

Love you!

Jimmy, Baker and Noah