COURTLAND
Three retired National Football League players who are alumni of Southampton High School, including one Superbowl winner, will return to their alma mater on April 22 to coach a free football camp for local children and teens.

Southampton High School graduate Greg Scott, the founder of the Cover 3 Foundation and a former NFL player himself, will host the event, and is one of the three retired players who have agreed to coach the camp, which will be known officially as the Cover 3 Foundation’s Youth Football Combine 2017.

“I want to kind of bring to the kids in this area what the NFL combine is like, the procedures, the individual drills for each position,” he said. “We definitely want to let the young people know what to expect for those who are lucky enough to make it to that point.”

Joining him on the fields of Southampton High School as fellow coaches will be Percy Ellsworth, who played in the NFL for seven years for the New York Giants and the Cleveland Browns, and Riddick Parker, who played for nine years in the NFL for multiple teams including the Seattle Seahawks, the New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens. In 2001, Parker won the Superbowl with the Patriots. Both graduated from Southampton High School shortly before Scott.

“They were the kind of guys I looked up to to help guide my path [to the NFL],” Scott said.

He described the event as “historic,” citing that it will be the first time in the history of Southampton County where three former NFL players will be in the county at one time to put on a free football camp.

Also participating as coaches are Franklin High School’s two-time state champion football coach, Darren Parker, FHS’s boys basketball coach Robby Cutchins, and Xavier Scott, a Franklin High School graduate who played football for Hampton University from 1997 to 2000.

According to Greg Scott, the camp will consist of a morning session for children ages 8 to 13 from 9 to 11:45, and an afternoon session for teens ages 14-18 from 1 to 4. There will be a noon to 12:45 p.m. session where participants can have lunch and teens can register for the afternoon session. Each participant will receive a commemorative T-shirt.

Scott is a 1998 graduate of Southampton High School whose NFL career included playing for the Washington Redskins and the Cincinnati Bengals, as well as arena football, before retiring in 2007.

The Cover 3 Foundation is a Franklin-based nonprofit organization that, according to its website, lists its mission as “to inspire and motivate children to achieve their goals and conquer adversity through positive, personal and passionate coaching, mentoring and community service.”

In 2010, the organization expanded its mentoring services to include providing meals to underprivileged children in Franklin, Southampton County, Greensville County, Sussex County, Emporia, Surry County, Petersburg, Richmond, Henrico County, Suffolk, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Virginia Beach and Newport News.