Club Members,
 
A quick update on our training camp planning: As of now the Vikings have not released their training camp plans so we cannot finalize our planning either. So I thought it would be a good idea for me to let you know our thoughts and our strategy. Last year the Vikings closed the Thursday prior to the first pre-season game. Last year’s game was at home which made this possible. This year the Vikes have to travel to Indianapolis for the first game – which means the Vikings would need to shut down training camp anywhere from one to three days early if they used the first game as the primary decision factor with training camp (Colt’s game is August 14th). Now last year’s first game was also earlier in the month of August; so, the date could also be used in the Vikings decision making process. It is possible that they keep training camp very similar to last year and close camp just prior to the Hall of Fame game (August 9th). If the Vikings did this it would make their training camp schedule very similar to prior years. The last possibility I see is the Vikings extend training camp to the first home game and they deal with travel to and from Mankato to the Colt’s game. If the team took this route they would be interrupting training camp for the first game – I’m thinking the team won’t do this unless they eliminate the shared scrimmages, that they have had in the past, basically substituting a game for a scrimmage (I’m not expecting this, but, it’s still a possibility).
 
So how does all this impact our club? It’s my first guess that we won’t be able to attend training camp and a home preseason game on the same trip this year. If this is what happens we will be attending training camp, scheduling Dome and Winter Park tours and having our Minneapolis dinner and we will not be attending the first home preseason game – the game will be sacrificed. With this decision made it is our plans to still travel towards the end of training camp – we need to allow our members to find the least expensive airfare possible. With this said we may shift things a few days either way of the last week of training camp to help plan the tours, dinner and the Winter Park personnel schedules (particularly Nikki Myers). So in a nutshell – if you have to tell your employer a tentative vacation schedule, use the week of August 3rd as your best guess with the possibility on Monday and Tuesday (August 10th and 11th) as a possibility. And technically; anything else that my limited little brain didn’t think of could change the dates, but, we will be attending training camp and it will be closer to the end of camp. I hope this gibberish helps some of you – if not email me or call me and I’ll try to confuse you even more.
 
On to the top stories of the day: As far as the Favre story goes – I’ll let the Vikings handle that. If they want a mentor for Tarvaris and Sage they can make that decision. It seems everyone has an opinion on this story and you probably do also. For me – it’s a team decision regarding both a short term impact and a long term impact, that’s what coaches and team personnel are for. The story I want to get into a little bit is the Kenechi Udeze story. To start with I believe Kenechi is a hero for beating cancer and saving the life of his children’s father. I understand there are only a handful of people that can do what he has done. To come back this far is just amazing to me. I’m saying this hoping he can continue and become an all star in this league. I’m also saying this knowing that he may not be able to make the team. For those of you who don’t truly understand what Kenechi has gone through, well, consider yourself lucky. For me personally I’m happy that he can continue to be a husband and a father and football is something to help better his family income – I quit being the football fan of Kenechi and became the fan of the man. His accomplishment is truly amazing to this part and I hope it continues; but if it doesn’t, he’ll always have a fan in me. There’s already a wonderful story here and it can only get better – best wishes Kenechi.
 
Oh yeah – the Vikings did improve with this year’s draft, the yearly improvement trend only needs to be proven on Sundays. For those Williams wall worriers – remember E.J. is back, possibly the best middle linebacker playing. I can’t wait to start this year’s party. I’ll be back when we have training camp figured out.
 
Wm. R. Martin
President
Southern California Viking Club