I can’t believe it but my senior football season is finally here. It seems like just yesterday that I was a young naïve freshman going into my first college football camp. Now here I am, staring down the last week of football camp ever. I am tremendously excited for the upcoming year and I can’t wait until the regular season starts (and camp is over). Now I am sitting here with my small amount of free time between practice and meetings reflecting on the senior trip that myself and 15 other seniors took last week.

 Our epic journey started in the great metropolis that is Zionsville (the town that Bryan Watson built). We all split into different vehicles (I had the pleasure of riding with Nasty Nate Kring) and drove to the land of Bob Campbell’s ancestors… West Virginia. We arrived at our campsite, set up our tents and tried to sit around the camp fire (it was not much of a fire because Dan Eddelman not only sucks at starting fires but also at accepting constructive criticism).  We woke up early the next day and prepared for our day of whitewater rafting. On our way to the river we had the pleasure of getting a tour of the self proclaimed best small town in America, Fayetteville, from one of our river guides. Once arriving at the river we split into two boats. I was part of the more experienced and all around better team: Twerk Team. The rest of the day was filled with white water rafting and river surfing. During one segment of the day every person fell in the water… Except for Tipton Legend Nate Kring, who at the first sign of trouble hid in the middle of the boat.

After our day on the river we went back to the campsite and got ready for dinner. Some of us decided to eat at Dirty Ernie’s Rib Pit, while others feasted on Bob’s vegetable soup. The rest of the night was not without drama. Jacob Grow and myself were briefly lost at the local Walmart, but Watson and Fern soon found us after the amber alert went out.

 We finished the night making s’mores around the fire (I am currently ranked 4th in the world in marshmallow toasting) and talking about the upcoming season and what it means to each of us as seniors. We solidified what our theme (Stop Pretending Start Contending) means to each one of us, and how we are going to communicate our feelings to the rest of the team. The next day we packed up our tents and made our way back to the Mecca of the Midwest: Zionsville. The end of the trip was highlighted by a smoke bomb in the wheel well of Bob’s truck causing Bob to think that his car was on fire.

 - Skip Tokar