The Run to The NFL Starts Here

No one learns speed like kids chasing rabbits in Florida sugarcane fields
By Max Brallier,  Newser User
Posted Apr 20, 2007 11:02 AM CDT
The Run to The NFL Starts Here
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Jacksonville   (KRT Photos)

There's a good reason Glades Central High School in Bell Glade, Florida, has produced 28 pro football players in the past 29 years. Refreshingly, it has nothing to do with steroids, high endurance training, or secret energy drinks, Eric Adelson testifies in ESPN.  Deep in the Everglades, kids run. They chase rabbits. They chase rabbits through burning sugar fields.

It's a tradition; a boys-into-men routine. Jacksonville Jaguars running back Fred Taylor remembers the fear he felt the first time he set foot in a burning cane field and tried to nab a three-pound rabbit running 35 mph. "I was a chump," he says. But he, like those before him, learned to face the fire.  (More Fred Taylor stories.)

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