Charged up by training camp in San Diego

Summer is an exciting time in San Diego, Calif. From golf to tennis, surfing to sailing, Legoland to SeaWorld, America’s Finest City has a lot to offer under skies of brilliant blue. But these options pale compared to the single most entertaining and important activity the city has to offer: San Diego Chargers Training Camp.

Training camp in the NFL is tough. Roughly three weeks before preseason starts, teams convene and begin a rigorous daily routine. They are required to leave their homes and live in the team hotel. Players spend up to 12 hours a day at the training facility, attending film sessions, positional meetings and lifting sessions in addition to two two-hour practices a day.

Many teams train far from their hometowns. The Chargers, however, have trained in San Diego for much of their existence and since 1997 have trained at Chargers Park, a state-of-the-art facility a few miles north of Qualcomm Stadium. Unlike some teams, who do not open their camps to the public, the Chargers regularly open around 15 practices to fans each summer.

The layout at Chargers Park allows fans to watch practice from a number of vantage points. Visitors enter through a gate south of the facility and are fed into an outer ring that stretches around the west side of the two primary practice fields. On warm days, the bleachers provide respite from the heat, while cooler days make it worthwhile to wander around the fields to get close-up views of different drills.

The players begin trickling out of the building half an hour before the horn sounds, signifying the start of practice. Usually, specialists — punters, kickers, long snappers and holders — are the first ones out. When the horn is blown, the team congregates on the western field and stretches and then does positional drills. This is when the excitement starts.

The linebackers and defensive linemen routinely do their drills about 10 feet from the fence in front of the bleachers. The drills include the standard set of lateral motion maneuvers and simple ball skills, but the perspective is incredible. It’s an unbelievable experience to see in person that three-time Pro Bowl outside linebacker Shawne “Lights Out” Merriman’s biceps really are larger than your face. Also, two-time Associated Press All-Pro nose tackle Jamal Williams is proportioned like a stocky, five-foot, five-inch man, but he actually stands at 6’3”.

An equally frightening physical specimen is Igor Olshansky, a 6’6”, 309-pound Ukrainian-born defensive end who runs a nutritional supplement business. Like Williams, Olshansky simply appears too large to be human. The juxtaposition of Olshansky and Williams, coupled with the group of fans oohing and aahing, almost made me feel like I was at a zoo during my first trip to Chargers Park.

Following positional drills is a group of integrated drills. Linebackers take on running backs, and defensive backs square off against receivers in one-on-one coverage battles, while offensive linemen practice blocking schemes, and defensive linemen practice coverage and blitzing schemes. Depending on the day, the Chargers also run extra punt coverage, offense vs. defense blitz protection or other specialized drills. This is the time when fans begin to get a sense of draft picks, free agents and up-and-coming players in the organization. The stakes are high, especially at positions at which four players might be competing for one roster spot. A few dropped balls or bad reads can make all the difference. It’s best to make your way around the field and see each of the different drills during this period to make the Chargers Training Camp experience complete.

The most exciting part of practice comes at the end. With about half an hour remaining, the team runs offense vs. defense, with a full 11 men on each side. The two-minute drill and other scenarios are simulated. While there is no tackling, the action is still exciting, especially with a team of the Chargers’ caliber. There’s nothing quite like watching future Hall-of-Fame running back LaDainian Tomlinson fly through a wide B-gap opened by All-Pro left tackle Marcus McNeill and streak down the sideline untouched from 20 feet away. Sure, the carry is meaningless, but when you can hear the man breathing and see the sweat flying off his arms as he rockets down the field, it might as well be a sunny Sunday afternoon at the Q.

Almost as impressive as the players are the fans who show up at training camp. Day practices draw sparse crowds, but nighttime sessions have drawn upwards of 6,000. Some fans attend every summer practice; others wait outside the entrance gate hours before it opens. I met one man who had somehow procured a San Diego Chargers baseball jersey with close to 50 signatures on it. Other fans order customized jerseys with their favorite players’ numbers and nicknames. I have seen “Lights Out” in salute of Merriman, “Igor” for Olshansky, “LT” for Tomlinson and “Jamal,” which is the name on my own customized jersey.

The fans recognize a sense of brotherhood among training camp attendees. It’s not uncommon to have a 10-minute discussion with a stranger regarding which practice squad linebacker is the best pass rusher or whether the third-string tight end is good enough to ever earn playing time. Optimism is as high as it’s been in years at Chargers Park, and it’s hard to attend a camp without hearing at least one supporter project a Super Bowl victory.

I am lucky enough to have a good friend from high school who has been an employee of the Chargers’ equipment staff for the last two summers. He could easily fill a book with the stories he’s told me, even if he omitted the ones that aren’t fit to print.

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For example, on one of the last days of camp this past summer, head coach Norv Turner rewarded the players with an hour-long trip to a local water park. The excursion was marked by numerous funny occurrences. Following a slide down one of the steeper slides in the park, Pro Bowl left guard Kris “Dirty” Dielman slid full-speed down the entire length of the 60-foot flat section designed to stop people at the end of their descent. According to the slide operator, this had never happened in the park’s 12-year existence.

Two years ago, now-entrenched quarterback Philip Rivers was in the process of winning over teammates following the release of fan-favorite Drew Brees, who was star tailback Tomlinson’s best friend on the team. In a seven-on-seven drill, the offensive call was a quarterback draw, a bit of a trick play and one that would never ever be called in a game due to Rivers’ lack of mobility. Merriman, fresh off a rookie season in which he had earned his teammates’ respect by notching 10 sacks, starting the Pro Bowl and earning AP Defensive Rookie of the Year honors, gave chase.

Instead of running out of bounds, Rivers broke to the outside and sprinted down the sideline. In a moment that was quickly uploaded to youtube.com by a fan, Rivers got around Merriman and didn’t stop running until he had reached the endzone. The crowd roared in approval, and the Alabama native won over many fans on the play. His determination and dedication to the team haven’t wavered since.

On my first trip of this past summer, a group of 10 other fans and I were serenaded by outside linebacker Carlos Polk during linebacker drills. While charging full speed into a trainer holding up a pad designed to simulate a blocker, Polk entertained us with a humorous rendition of the Bill Withers classic “Ain’t No Sunshine.”

A few minutes later at the same practice, my friends — who had never been to training camp before — joined me in watching a wide receiver vs. cornerback drill from the left side of the field. With the offense lined up five yards from the endzone, Rivers looked right and fired a pass that was deflected by free safety Eric Weddle. A mere five feet from the fence, wide receiver Chris Chambers had just finished running an out route in our direction, but due to AP All-Pro cornerback Antonio Cromartie’s blanket coverage was unable to draw the throw.

“Man, that was some pushin’,” Chambers said, grinning broadly. The sound of his heavy breaths, the sight of his enormous forearms and the smell of grass stains on his jersey shocked my senses. “Nah man, no it ain’t!” Cromartie replied, playfully shoving Chambers and laughing.

Not only had I just witnessed two of my team’s best players battling it out from 10 feet away, but I’d now seen them joking around. In as stern as a tone as I could muster, I declared, “This is why you come to San Diego Chargers training camp.”