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Published Friday, June 27, 2008 in Sports

Chris Young, Karsten Bailey return to football roots

By Chris Goltermann

The Times-Herald

When cousins and former NFL pros Chris Young and Karsten Bailey set out to start a youth football camp this summer, the pair came up with a central theme of getting "Back-to-Basics."

But standing on the same practice field Friday they once roamed during separate stints of the Danny Cronic Era, the former East Coweta High standouts could have easily called their first-year venture "Back-to-Where-It-All-Began" -- though the name wouldn't have fit nearly as neat on camp T-shirts.

Young, who played four-plus seasons at safety as a 2002 seventh-round draft pick of the Denver Broncos out of Georgia Tech, and Bailey, a former Auburn wideout taken in the third round of the 1999 NFL draft by Seattle, may never forget running sprints on the field adjacent to Shoemake Stadium.

Leading a group of 20-25 campers during the last of three days of instruction on Friday morning, the pair may have been learning as much about mentoring young athletes. The numbers might not have been as plentiful as originally hoped, but the message to what the duo hope to establish was evident.

"For us, it's all about giving back to the community," said Young. "We didn't get as many out as we might have hoped, but that's ok. It's our first year doing this. We just want everyone to know that this isn't an East Coweta thing. It's a Coweta County thing."

The idea to host the first-ever "Back-to-Basics" camp came not long after the two cousins each lost parents, Young's father and Bailey's mother. Both had been raised by single mothers and grew close to a point where the pair were talking to each other on a daily basis about both their careers and life afterwards.

The timing seemed equally right, in the wake of each's professional careers. A knee injury suffered in a preseason game in 2005, a week after signing a one-year contract, ended Young's NFL career in Denver, and he has begun his second in youth mentoring while continuing to live in Colorado.

"It's really what I love to do now, is work with developing young kids," he said. "The biggest thing we wanted this week was for the kids to come out and have fun and learn something."

Bailey, who played two years in Seattle and two in Green Bay, found new life in the Canadian Football League with the Saskatchewan Roughriders before calling it quits in 2006. He went back to school to finish his education degree and is in the process of receiving his teacher's certificate.

"It's always a joy to give back and help out younger kids," said Bailey of the camp co-sponsored by Hooters of Newnan, BJs Wholesale Club and Molly Maid of Buckhead. "Some of the kids have looked up to us, and we just want to provide good role models and get back to the basics and teach them the fundamentals of football."

Young also got an assist from a couple of his former Georgia Tech teammates including NFL free agent safety Tavarrus Tillman, among those helping out.

"We knew the first year was going to be slow with the economy. But we're just going to continue and do this around the same time every year," said Bailey. "Hopefully, every year it will get bigger and bigger."

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