Area football players get their chance to see where they rank

Kelly Mullen has known for a few years that her 12-year-old son Joseph has a knack for playing football, that the West Dundee resident can hold his own against the kids in and around his area.

Now she's going to get a chance to see how her son stacks up against football players his age from around the country.

Joseph Mullen was one of 158 players, ages 11 to 16, at the Lake Barrington Field House Saturday for the first Juniorrank.com combine.

The campers paid $49 each, arriving at 7 a.m. and staying until 4 p.m. They were tested much like NFL players are at the scouting combine. After the combine tests in the morning, the campers worked on more football-specific skills in the afternoon.

A majority of the players live in the suburbs and Chicago, but there were a few from Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana, and 15-year-old Derek Lehockey came all the way from Pennsylvania.

The results of those combine numbers will be posted at Juniorrank.com, and when more athletes from around the country also go through the combine, there will be a place to see how some of the best youth football players in the country rank against their peers.

Or like the T-shirts workers wore Saturday read: Get tested, get noticed, get nominated: Where Do You Rank?

"This is the first time we've ever been to something like this," said Kelly Mullen, who said she heard about the combine from Joseph's quarterback coach Jeff Christensen. "He's been playing football for four years and this is the next level. We just wanted to see nationally where he ranked."

The combine was run by Shaon Berry, a youth football coach and former University of Pittsburgh football player, who joined forces with former NFL player and coach Martin Bayless to run Juniorrank.com's first youth football combine.

The morning session included a 20- and 40-yard dash, medicine ball throw, bench press, shuttle run, broad jump and vertical jump.

The players took turns going from station to station getting tested in the different events. When they finished and broke for lunch, Berry told them: "Great job, fantastic job. We wanted to teach you how to do well on the combine side. There's another side to football. Football!"

After lunch and a speech from Baltimore Ravens strong safety Tom Zbikowski from Buffalo Grove, that's what the instructors worked on with the campers. There were drills broken into specific positions for wide receivers and defensive backs, running backs and linebackers and offensive and defensive linemen.

Scott Munroe's 13-year-old son Mitch, an eighth grader who will attend St. Charles East High School in 2010, went through the running back drills.

"He is very active and loves football," Scott Munroe said. "He had never done a combine before. He loved it, he was hoping for another one in a couple weeks.

"He's been playing running back for about seven years and was able to learn from the two running back coaches. He picked up some good instruction."

Three campers were honored with the Diamond in the Rough award: Eric Swenson from Naperville, Tracey Sharpe from Indianapolis, and Riley Glassman from Schaumburg.

Will those three, plus some others among the 158 in attendance, help their chances to gain college exposure from their experience Saturday? Mullen, entering seventh grade, still has two years to go until he gets to Dundee-Crown High School, but his mom certainly was impressed with the experience Saturday.

"It's very interesting to see what type of agility drills they do," Kelly Mullen said. "We've really liked it."

Scott Mullen also recommended the combine to other parents.

"I thought the combine was not only good competition but the kids really liked it. It was fun as well," Munroe said. "From the football perspective, I thought they did an excellent job from an instructional standpoint."