Cherokee Nation's Day of Champions Football Camp Set for Thursday in Tahlequah

Cherokee Nation will host the Day of Champions Football Camp Thursday at the Cherokee of Nations' Markoma facility in Tahlequah. The camp was developed by former University of Oklahoma All-American quarterback Josh Heupel. Heupel led Oklahoma to a perfect 13-0 season and national championship in 2000. Heupel, who broke many school passing records while at Oklahoma, was the runner-up to Florida State quarterback Chris Weinke for the Heisman Trophy during his senior season. He is currently the quarterbacks coach at OU. Ken Heupel, Josh's father, is the Day of Champions Football Camp CEO. Ken is the former head coach at Northern State University in South Dakota, but now devotes his time to football camps throughout the state each year. He also brings in current and former players, as well as coaches. This year's camp will feature a host of former players and coaches on both the collegiate and pro levels such as Earl Mosley, Josh Norman, Fletcher Terrell, Mark Roozen, Jason Bushers, Chuck Hepola, Matt Rice, Justin Iske, Sharrone Moore and Wayne Chambers. "The guys we bring in love to work with kids, not only for a football camp, but more importantly they want to teach leadership, courage and commitment to those who participate," Ken Heupel said. "Although the camp teaches fundamentals of athletics, it more importantly teaches the core tenets of leadership: discipline, trust, respect and hard work," said Dr. B.J. Boyd, Deputy Director for Behavioral Health Services at Cherokee Nation. "I have been working with Ken (Heupel) to bring Day of Champions to the Cherokee Nation for a couple of years. They devote a good portion of their time to working with the Indian nations in Oklahoma, so it was a great opportunity to provide a positive experience for Cherokee youth. "Our Behavioral Health Services Program coordinates a great deal of community-level prevention programs and has a good working relationship with a number of community organizations throughout the Cherokee Nation jurisdictional area in northeastern Oklahoma. We asked those organizations to recruit kids from their communities so that we would have participants from across the area. We have kids from as far north as Claremore and Vinita and as far south as the Sallisaw area." "The participants are all between the ages of 8 and 14. Although it's a football themed camp, it's all non-contact and the lessons learned are beneficial to all kids, so we encouraged girls to sign up as well, and many of them did," Boyd said. "This year's camp is a one-day pilot. Our hope is to generate enough interest on the part of kids, parents, and communities that we can make this a recurring event."