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By MARGARET NACZEK
Cronkite News

GILBERT – When Andre Johnson retired as a Houston Texan in 2016, he tearfully thanked his mother in his press conference. After Saquon Barkley became the No. 2 pick in the 2018 NFL Draft, he read a note his mother wrote praising the new New York Giants player on all his accomplishments.

“You see it every year in the National Football League. You always see guys on the camera saying ‘Hi, Mom.’ Never ‘Hi, Dad. It’s just a special feeling when you have the support of a mother,” former Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Roy Green said at the Cardinals youth football camp in Gilbert on Saturday.

The 17th annual Cardinals football skills and education camp allowed high school football mothers to participate in drills with their sons and learn more about the football safety with a special presentation by Kareem Shaarawy of the Barrow Neurological Institute.

Johnathan Ruiz, a ninth-grader at Seton Catholic who plays wide receiver, said having his parents at the event will force him to focus on learning.

“They’re going to know if I paid attention or not, so they’re going to ask me questions about it,” Ruiz said.

While all parents were invited to the concussion safety lesson and to watch their children run on-field drills, 15 mothers followed alongside their sons as they worked on technique for position players such as wide receivers, offensive and defensive linemen and running backs.

“They want to know,” Maurice Streety, Cardinals manager of youth football, said. “They get to shadow their kids by position. They’re learning, and they’re getting on the field real-time stuff from concussions to hydration to everything else you need to know about football.”

Rachel Arndt has two sons, a junior and senior, at Tonopah Valley High School who play quarterback and defensive end. This is her fourth year participating in the Cardinals skills camp. She said she keeps coming back to get a refresher on concussion safety training.

“The concussion safety is the biggest thing because I want them to have that reminder,” Arndt said. “Boys forget quickly, thinking this game matters, but I’m like, ‘Yeah, your brain matters more.’ That’s important to me.”

Like many mothers, Arndt worries about her two boys when they take the field on a Friday night, but that doesn’t stop her family from playing football.

“We love football, and my boys have been playing since they were 10 years old,” she said.
Some mothers attending the event were not only new to the Cardinals football camp, but football in general. Alysia Kurtz, whose son is a freshman offensive lineman and linebacker at Tonopah Valley High School, calls herself a first-time football mom.

Kurtz said she was looking forward to the knowledge her son would gain from former NFL players who were coaching the camp. For herself, she just hoped she could prove her own athletic skill.

“Apparently we are next to our kids all day, so I’d like to keep up with him,” Kurtz said.

According to reporting from Reuters, women comprise 45 percent of the NFL fan base, and NFL teams are using marketing and community building strategies to target this group, including in youth football camps.

“I feel like a lot of people just feel like women don’t really care about football, but I think that’s so untrue,” said Rudy Carpenter, a former ASU and NFL quarterback who was a coach at the camp.

“As we know, any kid that’s out here has a mom, and if there son is playing the sport, they want to be engaged, and they want to know the rules and they want to know what’s going on so they can better cheer on their kid and their teams,” Carpenter added.

Whether the moms were sitting on the sidelines cheering on their sons or running routes on the field, they showed what Green described as a mother’s natural love.

“You know a mother’s love is never dying,” Green said. “You know that so for them to be out here in the sun, inspiring their young ones on this football field. It’s just amazing to see. I love it.”

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