Friday, October 3, 2008

Mike Minter, flip flops and Jonathan Stewart


It was cool seeing former Panther Mike Minter as a head coach at Concord's First Assembly high school Thursday -- here's where you can find my column about his first season there. In the picture to your right, he's watching practice in his T-shirt, dress slacks, designer sunglasses and dress shoes, having come straight from a speaking engagement to the field.

But I couldn't fit all I wanted to in that story, including some facts about a cool service project that kids at First Assembly and Charlotte's Hickory Grove are doing. They have been collecting flip flops that will be shipped to Haiti soon, where some people don't have shoes at all -- thousands of pairs of them. That project grew out of a mission trip to Haiti that First Christian star running back Andrew Burton took last summer.

Burton goes to Kings Way Baptist church with Minter in Concord. Also attending that church is star QB Dayne Pickett of Hickory Grove, who took a mission trip to Guatemala this past summer. He and Burton are friends and decided to get their schools to team up on various service projects to benefit Haiti and Guatemala -- the flip-flop project is the first.

Minter told me that he thought he had about 10 players on his team that could play college football at some level in the future. He's got about 35 guys on it total, although only 20 or so were there Thursday because the JV team (where Minter's son, an 8th-grader, is a RB) had a game. Minter said he likes his offense to run out of the spread formation almost exclusively, yet they usually run the ball out of it.

Minter also said that he knew Panther RB Jonathan Stewart could play from the first time he laid eyes on him. Why? "Because he doesn't hesitate when it's time to hit a hole," Minter said. "That's how you tell with a rookie running back. In college, you can hesitate. In the NFL, you better get it, or else they'll get you."

2 comments:

Rich Devita said...

Stewart is a beast. I am glad Minter is doing well. He is the man. GO PANTHERS!

Joey said...

Thank you Mike for being an awesome Christian example!

1 John 1:9

Jeremiah 1:9, 20:9