To the untrained eye, Thursday morning at Ford Field looked like an ordinary summer day. A group of young children were going through football drills and scrimmaging with the kind of exuberance you’d expect from kids during summer playing on the same field of their favorite professional team.
That alone is a treat of its own, but for the Detroit Lions, it’s just another summer. The team has held these kind of youth football camps every summer for the past 16 years.
But as the kids wound down their games and collected their awards—including the “Romeo Okwara Hustle Award” or the “Kerryon Johnson Future Star Award”—there were signs today would be particularly special.