Need To Get Your Sugar Fix?

Rookie kicker Mark Brubaker had a new friend at camp
Wednesday, August 9, 2006

By Teresa VarleySteelers.com

Training camp is a time for the team to focus on football. It's the key time to prepare for the upcoming season. It's about practice, meetings, playbooks and the like.
But, despite the fact that camp is a serious approach to the season, there is still time for some fun. And the specialists on the team, kicker Jeff Reed, punter Chris Gardocki and long snapper Greg Warren are well aware of that.
After arriving at St. Vincent for camp, Reed and Warren headed to the local K-Mart in Latrobe to pick up some things that they needed for their room. They picked up a little something extra and had some fun with it the first week of camp.
"We went down the candy aisle and Greg said we should get one of those piñatas and put it in our room and load it with candy one week at a time and when we are done with camp just beat the heck out of it," said Reed. "We got Dora the Explorer to be funny. As we were checking out I said we should get the rookie kicker to carry it to all of the meetings and meals and everything."
So, shortly after rookie kicker Mark Brubaker arrived and got settled in to his room, Reed and Warren told him to come up to their room.
"I went up and they said I had to carry around the Dora the Explore piñata," said Brubaker. "I was supposed to take it in to meetings but I wasn't allowed to do that because it would be a distraction. I had to carry it to every meal, every workout; every time I was out and about I had to carry that thing around."
Brubaker was a good sport about it, carrying Dora around campus for the first week of practice without complaint, despite strange looks and comments from his teammates.
"He did well," said Gardocki. "He sang to it one night at dinner. He rocked it to sleep. But he is done with it now."
Each rookie had to sing in the cafeteria for the veterans, and when it was Brubaker's turn, Dora was in the spotlight as well.
"I had to sing Rock-A-Bye Dora up on the wall in the cafeteria in front of the whole team, so that was kind of embarrassing," said Brubaker. "But it was not that bad. Being a kicker you have to deal with pressure. If you can't be yourself in front of your teammates, who can you be yourself in front of?"
Right now Dora is hanging on the side of a chalkboard near the team's locker room. Brubaker doesn't have to carry it anymore, but he does still think about her.
"I will probably miss her a little bit," said Brubaker with a laugh. "She has become my friend. Every time I went out the door it was like, whoa, where is Dora at?
"I had to always keep an eye on her. I didn't know if they took her from me what else those guys would come up with. They are characters."
The guys do have plans for Dora, though, for the rest of camp
"We are going to fill her with candy now," said Brubaker. "The last day of camp we are going to take our frustrations out on her and see what happens."