Dabo’s All In Team® Foundation awarded a $2,000 grant to the Freddie Kitchens 12th annual football camp.

Kitchens, a standout quarterback at Etowah, Alabama and later Alabama in the 1990s, has been putting on the faith-based camp free of charge for area youths for the past 12 years. Several of Kitchens' teammates from his playing days for the Crimson Tide join him as instructors at the camp every year, including Ed Scissum and Toderick Malone, each of whom also starred at Etowah.

“This isn't just my camp,” said Kitchens, now the tight ends coach for the NFL's Arizona Cardinals. “It's Ed Scissum's camp and Toderick Malone's camp. They've been here every year. My name's on it, but it's their camp too.”

Kitchens' limited opportunities to attend football camps growing up was a major reason he started the camps. Scissum, a fullback at Alabama from 1994-97, echoed that reasoning.

“Growing up, I can speak for myself and probably Freddie and Malone, we didn't have a lot of opportunities to go to a lot of camps,” said Scissum, who works as a director at Evangeline Booth College, a theological school in Atlanta. “Even though we didn't have camps, we had excellent coaches and mentors that had a chance to touch our lives. Being able to come back to this camp and be mentors and teach a little bit of football to these young kids who look up to us is a great opportunity and we enjoy doing it every year.”

Saturday's camp started at 9 a.m., and campers and staff braved the heat until its conclusion at 2 p.m. Although football was the reason the kids were there, Kitchens hoped they got something more out of the day.

“I want them to work, but I want it to be fun for them,” Kitchens said. “I want them to having had fun for a day, not having any worries.”

Freddie Kitchens talks with a camper during his 12th annual youth football camp Saturday at Gadsden City High School.