A group of former University of Florida football players will bring their annual summer camp to Fort Walton Beach next week, and for Aaron Deal, it’s a homecoming.
- The third annual Florida Community Football Camp will be held July 11 at Joe Etheredge Stadium at Choctaw High School. The camp is free and open to all kids ages 6-12, with lunch provided.
Deal, who played at Choctaw before going on to play at Florida, is this year’s host. The camp rotates each year to the hometown of a different former Gator, with the 2024 camp held at Titusville High School and the 2025 camp at Santa Fe High School in Alachua, near Gainesville.
The concept grew out of something simple: a group of former teammates looking for an excuse to get back together.
“What we do is a group of myself and former Florida players that played in the ’90s and early 2000s get together every year. We kind of treated this like a reunion, an excuse for us all to get together, but we thought in doing so, why don’t we each do something to try to give back to each of our communities,” Deal said. “We came up with this idea of having a football camp every summer, and what we would do is we would travel around to each of our high schools throughout the state of Florida. Each year, somebody would host it, and that way we could each get to see where everybody came from.”
Kids will be run through drills, play games and hear from the former players about the importance of staying on the right path.
The camp runs from 9 a.m. to noon. For more information, visit FloridaCommunityFootballCamp.org.
