ROANOKE, Va. (WFXR) – Standout linebacker for the Georgia Bulldogs and former Salem High School star, Chris Cole, held his first youth football camp Saturday giving back to the community that raised him.

Advertisement

“Yeah, so the idea came back like when I was a kid, just like when I was six or seven. And I was just always a dream that just like going big and it’s going was like my goal was just to, you know, just like give back to my community. And now I can and now and now, like I’m in a position fighting to give back to all my community because like, that was just me,” said Cole.

At the Lab Sports Performance in South Roanoke, young athletes came out to receive hands-on coaching from the college linebacker himself, getting a taste of what it takes to chase their own dreams.

“Like, you know, like they have someone that they look up to and they look up to me. So just like a blessing, like, just like to look up to me, Cole added. And I was so happy just for the kids to be happy and just to have fun and just play football.”

Cole says this camp not only provided valuable football training but also served as an inspiration for the next generation of athletes in the Roanoke area.

Advertisement

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFXRtv.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Even young golfers could have some fun during the PGA Championship this weekend.

PGA Jr. League kids met with PGA of America President Don Rea Saturday afternoon to discuss how to better grow the game.

Advertisement

Rea says last year there were about 77,000 kids playing in the PGA Jr. League. The league ends with a national championship at the home course of the PGA of America, PGA Frisco.

“It’s an exciting program that goes from community all the way to TV, and that’s what you love about it,” Rea said.

Weather delay didn’t stop PGA Championship spectators from enjoying the course

PGA Jr. League allows kids 17 and under to get nice golf experiences with more than 2,400 expert PGA coaches. They wear numbered jerseys and play on teams with their friends, competing in a two-person scramble format that Rea says builds confidence and encourages sportsmanship.

Advertisement

“It teaches you so many things. It’s great because you play a two-person scramble. So, kids are helping each other. Parents aren’t reading the putts, the kids are reading their own, and they’re talking to each other. So it teaches accountability, it teaches friendship. They also recruit other kids into the program. It teaches how important it is to leave it better than you found it. But ultimately, if we plant the seeds of golfers as PGA professionals, then today that crop comes up with more people playing golf. And that’s what the PGA is all about.”

Derrick Hylton has been playing golf since he was three years old. He says the PGA Jr. League has taught him how to have fun.

But what he really likes is practicing the sport. “It’s just getting out there on the course and having fun,” Hylton said.

In North and South Carolina, more than 2,000 youth participated through 157 programs.

Advertisement

Rea says with school out, it’s a great summer activity for the kids. “Sign-ups are happening right now, they’re always happening!” he said.

After a short discussion, the kids took pictures with the PGA Championship trophy.

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to Queen City News.

Cleveland Browns tight end David Njoku hosted a youth football camp for local kids at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson Sunday afternoon, ahead of camp season for the Browns in Berea.

“We’re having a blast, and we’re going to have a great camp with these amazing kids, you know, have a lot of fun,” Njoku said.

The camp, run through FlexWork Sport Management, was accessible to kids ages six through 16.

He started his morning by sharing energy with the kids as he helped run drills and plays.

“Just the youthful energy, you know, the excitement of… being able to work, you know, being blessed enough to be here today, helping,” Njoku said.

There was plenty of fun amongst the young players, but Njoku gave a very important lesson to the kids who participated on the field.

“Hard work, man,” said Njoku, “…hard work comes first.”

Amid the hard work, the day was filled with connection and memories that the kids won’t soon forget.

“It’s always all about the kids… It’s always about the next generation,” said Njoku. “We’re here to have fun, get some work in and have a great day.”

“There’s still six minutes left in the game, why is he passing up on his shots?” I sat on the edge of the bleachers, hands shaking, stomach half way up my throat, as my 15-year-old son, Sean, fell back onto defense.

Mind you, I had not always suffered from what I am calling “SSDS,” or scholastics sports derangement syndrome. Seeing one’s progeny excel in any domain, however, is a powerful intoxicant. And so, as Sean became interested in team sports in third and fourth grade, and ran for 50-yard touchdown after 50-yard touchdown in pee-wee football, and was one of those miraculous 10-year-olds who could both shoot and crossover dribble in basketball, I was sucked in.

The kid excelled in everything he tried. Even in a one-season stint as a little league pitcher, he ended up with an 8-and-0 record and countless strike-outs. But as he approached adolescence, dark clouds began to gather.

Ghosts of Adolescence Past

Funny how the ghosts of one’s past can come back to haunt. I was a late bloomer—a real late, late bloomer in high school. Overnight the boys around me became men. They were crashing through walls of 240-pound lineman and going out on dates. I was still playing with Hot Wheels. It took until senior year for any coach to take me seriously. For a kid who lived for sports, it was all a less-than-palatable experience.

Determined to save my son the same indignation, I became his relentless personal trainer—and nag. I pushed him hard every free moment I had. He had to eat more, run more, lift more, shoot more, read more (of the great works of Pele, Jordan, and Bird). Never satisfied with his games, I critiqued every moment of every contest, and angered at any sub-Herculean effort. For I knew it was coming. It was in the genes. He was young in his class, skinny, and well behind the developmental curve. Despite his natural athleticism, he too would have to face the oft-moronic world of high school coaching that saw only the hormonally advanced.

Benched

The first blow came from an unexpected source. After excelling on the school’s seventh-grade basketball team as one of those plucky guards with an incessant in-your-face defense and a deadly outside shot, his basketball career abruptly was iced by his new eighth-grade coach who apparently saw no basketball aptitude in him. In the blink of an eye, Sean went from star to scrub. Game time became limited to the hapless melee of the last minutes of a 30 point blowout.

There seemed to be no plausible explanation. True, the coach’s son was vying for the same position on the team, but I wouldn’t, couldn’t believe that nepotism would/could have an influence on junior high basketball. When said eighth grade coach went on to replace Sean’s ninth grade coach, Sean considered quitting the team.

Epiphany

I, in an epiphany about misguided parenting, was overwhelmed by crushing ambivalence. If he quit basketball, I could make up for so much wasted father-son time. We could go hiking and play guitar together, and tinker in the barn and go fishing. I could cease being the task-master and be a fun dad again. Like when he was 9 and we used to wrestle or play one-on-one for hours on end. But alas, he was 15 now. He hurt me when we wrestled. He beat me with embarrassing ease one on one, and he seemed to enjoy time with his friends more than with his creaky old dad.

Sean decided to persevere. And so here I was at another game night, stomach in knots, watching him warm up. With the coach’s son and three other “starters” down with the flu, Sean actually got a starting nod and came out of the blocks on fire. He scored 14 of the team’s first 16 points. He passed accurately and shot with confidence. He made several steals and tied-up his opponents for jump-balls half a dozen times.

Off the Wagon

All the time, up in the bleachers, his old man sat like a tightened spring, silently screaming at the coach “in your face” every time a basket dropped or he forced another turnover. Yes, the reformed parental sports maniac had fallen off the wagon. All my thoughts of an exegesis on the role and reason for scholastic athletics—how we Americans had lost our compass; how sports should be more inclusive in this ever-more-sedentary society; how the lessons of team-building, cooperation, shared effort, and resilience in the face of adversity should be the point, not winning at all cost; how we dads needed to let our kids find their own ways, not be forced to live out our dreams—had evaporated in the joy of seeing Sean back in action. He was in damn-it, and he was making a mockery of his detractors…

Entering the fourth quarter, I pleaded with the gods for Sean to run up his box score. To my horror, though, he started passing up on shots. I counted at least three open threes, and several wide-open driving lanes that he ignored. The lump in my throat grew and I began to tremble.

“He’s Giving Jonesy the Ball”

“There’s still six minutes left in the game, why is he passing up his shots?” I blurted to my wife. She provided the answer in an instant: “He’s trying to give the ball to Jonesy.”

And, of course, that was what he was doing. Jonesy, a victim of the same type of treatment as Sean, only worse, now stood at the low post muscling off his defender, and Sean was repeatedly zipping passes into him. When Jonesy converted and the team retreated to defense, a grinning Sean gave Jonesy a quick fist-bump then resumed his attack on the ball.

With four minutes left in the game, Sean took a seat on the bench. He apparently had requested to be taken out of the game. Not due to injury or fatigue, but so one of the lowliest of the scrubs could get some minutes on the court.

Class

Later that night, I thumped his shoulder in the usual father-son, no-hug, goodnight ritual, and I told him how much I admired him—not for his play but for his actions toward his teammates. I told him that in those acts, he exhibited more class, more maturity, more humanity, than had been shown by the many adults around him—his father included.

County commissioners will learn Tuesday just how much Trump security costs have impacted next year’s budget.

Higher costs incurred by Palm Beach County to provide security for President Donald Trump have created unprecedented challenges for officials to craft a state-mandated balanced budget.

If you ever want to get under a journalist’s thin skin, throw out the old jab, “You only wrote that to sell newspapers!” Or, in the modern age, “to get clicks.”

Well, of course we did. Getting people to pay to read what we write is our business. Nobody accuses McDonald’s of cooking food “just to sell burgers,” do they?

At the same time, in 27 years in this industry I don’t think I’ve ever written a story with that goal in mind. We go where the news takes us. Sometimes it’s boring and routine, sometimes it’s fun or salacious, but hopefully it’s always interesting enough to get you to plunk down $1.50 for a print copy of the paper or pay for an online subscription.

Actually, there is one exception to that.

A couple of years ago another media outlet was running an athlete of the week contest. The daughter of my wife’s friend was a nominee, and Shannon was enlisted as part of an online army to spam the vote.

Shannon spent the better part of a weekend clicking, refreshing, then clicking again while trying to push our candidate over the top. She was amazed watching the vote totals pile up into the thousands, and suggested that we should do something like this at The Vicksburg Post.

After some talks with the Powers That Be about how to make it work, The Vicksburg Post’s Athlete of the Week contest was born. It was partially a way to drive reader engagement — a fancy way of saying we were doing it to get clicks and sell papers — and it worked.

In the three years we’ve had the contest, more than 226,000 votes have been logged. Thanks to our readers, the contest has grown each year and is one of our most popular online features every week at vicksburgpost.com.

Like all of our other stories, however, it’s not just about getting clicks and selling papers. Another reason to start our Athlete of the Week contest was to recognize our local athletes for their successes in a new and fun way. It’s worked in that regard, too.

Our long-running “Who’s Hot” feature is great to spotlight a player of the day, and Athlete of the Week allows us to build on that. We’ve done our best to include nominees from every sport, boys and girls, schools in Warren County and the surrounding area, and a good mix of recurring stars and others who put it together for a couple of games.

During the 2024-25 high school sports year we had 100 athletes nominated across 11 different sports from seven schools and one youth sports organization. A total of 31 athletes took the weekly honor, with Vicksburg High football player DeCorey Knight Jr. and St. Aloysius basketball player Carson Gleese each winning twice.

The contest comes to a natural conclusion in early May, when the spring high school sports season peters out. But rest assured we will bring it back with a vengeance in late August once everything gets fired up again.

So as I always do in the weekly write-up announcing the winner, I’d like to say congratulations to this year’s nominees and winners and thank you to our readers for voting. Without all of you participating, Athlete of the Week obviously would not be as popular as it has become.

Let’s do it again next year and keep this train rolling.

•

Ernest Bowker is the sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com

2024-25 ATHLETES OF THE WEEK
SEPTEMBER
• Sept. 1 – Melissa Herrle, Warren Central volleyball
• Sept. 8 – DeCorey Knight Jr., Vicksburg High football
• Sept. 15 – Lauren Flowers, St. Aloysius volleyball
• Sept. 22 – Pierson Smith, St. Aloysius football
• Sept. 29 – Raphael Neal, Port Gibson football

OCTOBER
• Oct. 6 – Makynzie Dunmore, Vicksburg High volleyball
• Oct. 13 – Auston Moore, Porter’s Chapel football
• Oct. 20 – Ronnie Blossom, Warren Central football
• Oct. 27 – Jonah Artman, Warren Central football

NOVEMBER
• Nov. 3 – DeCorey Knight Jr., Vicksburg High football
• Nov. 10 – Jamarian Shelly, Warren Central soccer
• Nov. 17 – Jack Dickerson, St. Aloysius soccer
• Nov. 24 – Ryder Jones, Briarfield Academy football

DECEMBER
• Dec. 1 – Carson Gleese, St. Aloysius basketball
• Dec. 8 – Jadarius Henderson, Vicksburg basketball
• Dec. 15 – Anthony McCloud, St. Aloysius basketball

JANUARY
• Jan. 12 – Jacob Porter, Warren Central soccer
• Jan. 19 – James McKenna, Warren Central bowling
• Jan. 26 – Carson Gleese, St. Aloysius basketball

FEBRUARY
• Feb. 2 – Sydney Sullivan, Warren Central tennis
• Feb. 9 – Jordan Polk, Warren Central soccer
• Feb. 16 – Michael Evans, Port Gibson baseball
• Feb. 23 – Ellie Tennison, Warren Central tennis

MARCH
• March 2 – Clark Hobson, St. Aloysius baseball
• March 9 – Julia Moberley, St. Aloysius track
• March 16 – KeKe McKay, Warren Central softball
• March 23 – Tripp Gayle, Tallulah Academy baseball
• March 30 – Walt Andrews, St. Aloysius baseball

APRIL
• April 6 – Zion Knox, Vicksburg track and field
• April 13 – Harmony Harris, Vicksburg softball
• April 20 – Tyler Hatler, Porter’s Chapel track
• April 27 – Maddox Lynch, Warren Central baseball

MAY
• May 4 – J.T. McDaniel, Tallulah Academy baseball

About Ernest Bowker

Ernest Bowker is The Vicksburg Post’s sports editor. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post’s sports staff since 1998, making him one of the longest-tenured reporters in the paper’s 140-year history. The New Jersey native is a graduate of LSU. In his career, he has won more than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and Associated Press for his coverage of local sports in Vicksburg.

More by Ernest