Emporia Middle School’s eighth-grade football team, its season over for quite awhile now, had just come back inside Thursday from an ice-cold drill session staged as a photo shoot for ESPN — let that settle in your head for a second — and the Vikings were filing past a table to get some hot chocolate.
Charlie Wilks, the Vikings’ blind nose guard and subject of a number of newspaper articles and television news segments over the past few months, was standing aside next to Ben Houser, the senior producer for the ESPN news magazine “E:60.” Any notion that Charlie might not be comfortable with all the media attention he’s received was wiped away in one question to Houser.
“How’d you like that sack I had?” Charlie asked.
Since The Gazette’s story on his football pursuits in August, Charlie has been covered by numerous TV stations and newspapers eager to tell the story of how a kid who’s been completely blind since age 6 can line up at nose guard and play against kids with eyesight. “Today” and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” inquired about Charlie but didn’t produce segments on him.
Now, ESPN is preparing to give Charlie’s story perhaps its biggest audience yet. “E:60,” which will come back from hiatus in February and begin airing new episodes in April, was in town Wednesday and Thursday to shoot portions of a segment on Charlie that will air at an unscheduled date this spring.
In Thursday afternoon’s frigid, foggy conditions, the Vikings ran through some basic drills in a spot cleared out in the snow covering the EMS grounds as ESPN’s cameras rolled on Charlie. Thursday evening brought a second photo shoot for Charlie at Welch Stadium, with a spotlight, stadium lights and darkness all playing a role. Couple those events with “E:60” following Charlie during school on Thursday, and the entire experience made for a pretty big day for an eighth-grader.
“I mean, everybody’s following me around everywhere, so I get kind of annoyed with everybody following me,” Charlie said. “But I think it’s pretty cool that one of the major sports... networks came down here to interview me, to see me play football, to see all these guys play football. I’m really glad they got down here. Because like I said, football is a sport that I love, and it felt good to get back out here.”
Charlie lost his sight after two surgeries to remove a brain tumor, discovered when he was 5. He had grown to love football before going blind — his grandfather, Al Reynolds, played for the Kansas City Chiefs — and when he reached the seventh grade, he joined the EMS squad. Charlie gets help from both his teammates and the opposition on getting in the right position before the snap, and once the ball’s snapped, he gets off the line and tries to tackle, as he put it back in August, “whoever gets in my way.”
“E:60’s” subject matter ranges from investigative features to athlete profiles to human interest stories. When Houser was looking for story ideas and found online video from one of the TV reports on Charlie, he knew he had found a story that would interest a national audience.
“So we have a general meeting to talk about ideas — sometimes, they get shot down, whether it’s, ‘That’s not interesting enough,’ or ‘That athlete’s probably not gonna talk to you,’” Houser said. “But in Charlie’s story, I think everybody was just very intrigued.
“Even just walking around the ESPN offices, there’s a bunch of former athletes that are there — whether it’s Kordell Stewart, the Steelers quarterback, or Jamal Anderson, who’s the Falcons running back — and they would say, ‘What are you working on?’ I would say, ‘Well, I’m working on a story about a young teenager named Charlie Wilks, and he’s blind, and he plays football.’ And everyone’s reaction is, ‘How is that possible?’”
Houser contacted the school, and even though the Vikings’ season was over, EMS assistant principal Brian Pekarek arranged for permission for Thursday’s practice to be held.
Upon meeting Charlie this week, it didn’t take Houser long to get a glimpse of Charlie’s sense of humor and the enthusiasm for life that he’s become known for.
“He really has a funny candor about him,” Houser said. “When I met him for the first 10 minutes last night, he started rattling off the things he does: ‘I play guitar, I ride my bike, I like to play football.’ ... He just kept listing these numerous things he enjoys doing. I said, ‘Well, what don’t you do?’ He says, ‘I don’t see.’
“So I mean right there, early on, he’s goofing around. He’s telling me jokes, blind jokes, things that, to him, it’s something that he just deals with.”
On Wednesday, before traveling to Emporia, the “E:60” crew was in Kansas City to talk to Chiefs nose tackle Glenn Dorsey. Charlie is a huge Chiefs fan, and when the entire Viking team got a chance to travel to Kansas City and meet some Chiefs players, he and Dorsey exchanged phone numbers.
“We talk quite a bit,” Charlie said. “But I mean, he’s a busy guy, so I don’t talk to him as much as I’d like to. ... We talk about the Chiefs, and we’re just like friends.”
The trip to Kansas City was Charlie’s favorite part of the coverage he’s gotten in the last few months.
“I’d have to say my second-favorite,” he said after Thursday afternoon’s shoot, “was football today.”
Faculty and students at EMS have been happy to see Charlie become a celebrity.
“Everybody’s just thrilled about the coverage,” Pekarek said, “and especially because he’s such a great guy. He just fits in so well. It’s an inspirational story for us, too, and we’re so proud of Charlie, it’s nice to kind of share him with the world...”
Thursday night’s photo shoot at Welch provided another fine example of Charlie’s love of life. “E:60,” using a large jib camera, filmed Charlie running up and down the snow-covered field. On one run, as he came to a stop near the north end zone, Charlie broke off an unscripted somersault.
Sometime soon, an ESPN audience will get to see that personality on full display. Charlie plans to go out for track and field in the spring, competing in the long jump, shot put and discus, and Houser said “E:60” would probably return to Emporia to film him in action in those events before Charlie’s episode airs.
“I don’t feel like I’m an inspiration,” Charlie said. “I just see myself as any other kid. I’m just getting out there and doing a sport that I love.”
create (anonymous) says...
How can anybody help but be inspired by that kind of enthusiasm and confidence. You go, Charlie! And thank you, Charlie's parents, for the great job you are doing raising a remarkable boy.
December 20, 2008 at 7:33 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )