John Hartsock
Sports Writer
jhartsock@altoonamirror.com
Courtesy pic Former Altoona star athletes Eli Mencer (left) and Kevin Givens worked out at House Parking area this summer.
By John Hartsock
jhartsock@altoonamirror.com
The COVID-19 epidemic has been putt a large question mark around when National Football Conference training camps would start this year, but the conference has authorized permission for virtually camps to open Tues, with extended examination protocols required before players testament be permitted to enter camp facilities.
Two former Altoona Area High School stars, Kevin Givens and Eli Mencer, have been waiting enthusiastically to answer the bell.
Some 2022 Altoona graduates testament be cast bids to bring in a spot along a pair of active NFL rosters — Givens with the San Francisco 49ers and Mencer with the Seattle Seahawks.
Givens will personify preparing at the 49ers' SAP Training Facility in Santa Clara, Calif., while Mencer will account to the Seahawks' Virginia Mason Gymnastic Center in Renton, Wash.
Givens, a early major-college standout at Penn State, appeared in one regular-season game live on year at defensive tackle for the 49ers, with whom he signed a take as an undrafted NFL disembarrass agent in 2022 after foregoing his terminal season of football eligibility with the Nittany Lions.
Mencer, who shined as an outside line backer-defensive attitude end and all-purpose special teams Football College Subdivision (FCS) player at the University of Albany, also signed an undrafted free-broker take this spring with the Seahawks.
Both players have been involved in strength and conditioning workouts at Planetary house Park this summer Eastern Samoa members of a grouping of former region senior high school football game stars. The workouts are beingness held low the direction of Altoona High assistant football coach Microphone Adams, WHO heads up the Mountain Lions' strength and conditioning program.
Givens and Mencer are both optimistic about their chances of nailing down NFL roster spots this summertime.
"My main goal is equitable to make the team, then hopefully, to get happening the field," said the 6-invertebrate foot-1, 285-pound Givens, WHO as wel appeared in quadruplet preseason exhibition games last class with the 49ers before fashioning one tackle in the team's in conclusion regular-season game Celestial latitude. 29 at Seattle. "I believe that if I keep working hard and doing what I've been doing, everything will take care of itself."
Givens didn't make the 49ers' 53-serviceman active roster out of training camp last year but earned a spot on the team up's practice session squad and was promoted to the surface-active roster for the Seattle game after the 49ers had sustained a rash of injuries.
He said that last season's get instilled confidence in him that helium could play at football's highest level.
"It definitely gave me confidence," Givens said. "It was definitely encouraging. I was sort of nervous going into camp Eastern Samoa an undrafted free agent, and it took me awhile to get accustomed to the NFL and the speed of the game. Merely erst I got my timing opportune and got wont to the plays, I felt like I belonged there with everybody else."
San Francisco boasts a talented and deep defensive fore that helped the 49ers to hand Super Bowl LIV in Miami last February — a game which Givens watched from the sideline as a member of the 49ers' quiescent list.
"It was definitely a daydream come echt," Givens said of being on deal personally to catch the Extremely Bowl gage, in which the 49ers dropped a 31-20 decision to the Kansas City Chiefs. "I think out that my game design this year will be to belittle mistakes and to always stay consonant. I call back that if I put up do that, at that place's a really good chance that I can get to where I want to be."
At 6-1, 225 pounds, Mencer started all four years happening all the exceptional teams for Albany and believes that his special teams performance in camp will determine his emerging with the Seahawks.
"I would articulate that the biggest thing for Pine Tree State is that I have to make my mark and pull in the coaches' trust in me connected special teams," same Mencer, who was in on 198 career tackles (106 solo), and 21.5 sacks, in 45 games while playing three full seasons arsenic a defensive crank at Albany. "I would say that I have every bit good a chance as anybody else (to make the Seattle roll) arsenic long as I continue to work hardened. I have much of versatility to go a team — I can do a great deal of things on the field and do them asymptomatic."
A nose-to-the grindstone work ethic is a personal strength for both Givens and Mencer, according to Adams, the Scores Lions' boys head track and field coach, World Health Organization has coached both athletes in both football and track.
"They're both extremely hard workers who have been teammates since junior high," Adams said. "They love to compete, they're both really motivated, and they feed soured each other's DOE."
COVID complications
The start of the NFL's daily season hasn't yet been pushed back because of the pandemic. Opening night is smooth Th, Sept. 10, and the 49ers and Seahawks are both scheduled to open their diarrhoeic seasons on Sunday, Sept. 13.
Preseason and offseason preparations and festivities are a variant matter, however. The NFL recently reached an understanding with the NFL Players Association to eliminate all four exhibition games this year — a decisiveness that will limit exposure for younger, untested upstarts like Givens and Mencer, who are trying to make impacts with their teams.
Mini-camps and offseason training activities (OTAs) were scratched this spring when the pandemic began infiltrating the country. The Hall of Fame game at Canton, Ohio, which had been set for Aug. 6, was canceled, and the enshrinement of the league's 2022 Hall of Celebrity Class was postponed.
Extensive safety protocols were needed to be put into place for training camps to open, and classification it all out took time for the NFL and the NFL Players Association.
All players will be required to undergo a pair of successful COVID-19 tests, sandwiched around a three-twenty-four hour period quarantine, ahead being permitted to enter camp facilities for training and conditioning. Once conditioning begins, players testament equal tested daily for 14 consecutive days.
Afterward those 14 days, if all positive tests are under a pentad-percentage level, players volition still Be required to undergo tests every unusual day.
"The NFL and the NFL PA (had) to come to an agreement about what is best for the players' safety," said Mencer, World Health Organization graduated from Albany with a grade in sociology and journalism and also earned a selection on the Connected Pressing FCS All-America moment team up for his gambling as a senior last season, when he registered an Albany single-flavor record 14.5 sacks, equally well as 24 tackles for loss.
Current negotiations between the league and its Players Tie concerning how — or if — players testament share in revenue losses that their teams will sustain if the pandemic shortens or cancels the season, could also be a factor in whether camps testament start on time.
Nonetheless, Mencer remains highly positive and optimistic about his own prospects.
"I'm extremely enthusiastic (about breeding camp)," Mencer aforesaid. "I think that I can add a lot of value to a team, and I have to continue to think that direction. Correct now, I'm looking for to quest after a lifelong path to play in the NFL."
The pandemic has recently worse in many areas of the rural area, including California. But Givens — who signed a three-year, non-guaranteed contract with the 49ers in 2022 — has done his unexcelled to ready himself for football this offseason.
"I'm just trying to prepare myself and always be gear up and available," aforesaid Givens, who made 83 tackles (40 solo), including 22 tackles for red and 13.5 sacks, over his redshirt freshman, redshirt sophomore and redshirt junior seasons at Penn State before declaring for the NFL tipple. "That ought to work for me."
The pandemic gave both players a chance to restitution to their hometown, accept their families and work out at Mansion Ballpark this summer.
"Kevin and I are hot to have somebody like Coach Adams World Health Organization is willing to bring with us and help us to continue to push ourselves," said Mencer, WHO was named the Mirror's 2014-15 Cobalt-Athlete of the Year. "He has done a lot for a peck of players."
Givens agreed.
"Usually I would train down in Florida, but I didn't think that was a thoroughly idea with this whole (pandemic) going on," Givens said. "I stayed at interior to train with Coach Adams at Mansion Park, and it's been identical good. Atomic number 2's had me, Eli and the other guys working very hard."
Different world
The world is much incompatible in 2022 than it was in 2022, and not just because of COVID-19.
The killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in Minneapolis, Minn. on May 26, resulted in murder charges existence brought against four white Minneapolis police officers. The ugly incident sparked national offend, ramped up the focus on the job of systemic racial discrimination in America, and has generated a surge in social judicature platforms across the country by athletes and civilians similar.
Neither Givens or Mencer has some concrete ideas about how social Department of Justice expressions by players and teams wish genus Pan out in the NFL, Beaver State how they are going to approach the issue, other than giving it about serious thought in advance.
"We had many Zoom meetings as a team up this summer about what is going on in the body politic, how everybody is getting along and how everybody felt," aforementioned Givens, an all-state introductory-team excerpt as a high shoal senior at Altoona. "I look like once we join forces as a team, we're all sledding to sit down and get a feel for how everybody is doing, and what everybody can do to make things major."
"I just hope that everybody can bide safe, do the right things, and things volition mind of themselves," Givens said.
So does Mencer.
"It's a pretty big thing that everybody is dealing with," Mencer said. "We're entirely happening this planet together, so we power as well all coiffure our best to get on, and to have everybody treat each opposite like they would plow members of their personal family.
"I'm definitely going to have conversations with my family and with some of the guys on the team who have been out (in Seattle) already and try to figure out what is best for everybody."
Rooting for each other
Givens and Mencer are friends who compliments the Sunday-go-to-meeting for each other in their NFL ventures and who some get optimistic outlooks about the chances for the other's succeeder.
"I think he has a good chance," Givens same of Mencer's prospects of becoming an hot penis of the Seahawks' roster. "He's a very hard worker who can play multiple positions, and I think that if he keeps temporary, he'll equal fine."
Mencer has been awestruck by the physical get along of Givens, WHO terrace-pressed 225 pounds 32 times at the 2022 NFL Scouting Mix up.
"We gradual flooding school together — helium's a phenomenal jock," Mencer said. "Atomic number 2's gotten stronger, helium's gotten faster, he's gained (muscle) weight. IT's crazy to see the person that He has become. He has a great work ethic, and I don't see how any team can look back ultimo that. I absolutely opine that he has a great shot at making it."
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Source: https://www.altoonamirror.com/sports/local-sports/2020/07/altoonas-mencer-givens-working-toward-nfl-dream/
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