Live Oak — corey.davis@gaflnews.com



LIVE OAK-Suwannee great Andra Davis and a few friends helped put on the Fifth Annual Celebrity Charity weekend.

The weekend started Friday with a football and cheerleading clinic at Paul Langford Stadium. A projected 160 kids were on hand to learn football and cheerleading skills.

Suwannee High’s coaching staff and some of its players, Jackson Brown, Alex Falleck, Clarence Evans, Andre Zanders, Nick Hurst, Jordan McGrew, Greg Swinson and Jacob Palmer assisted on teaching the kids fundamentals along with Andra Davis and Union County great CJ Spiller.

“The purpose of this was to show kids, you can be like myself or CJ and come from small towns and make it,” Davis, who lives in Denver, said. “Anytime I can show my face in Live Oak I will. Once a Bulldog always a Suwannee Bulldog.”

Davis enters his ninth year in the NFL and will be playing for his third team after recently joining the Buffalo Bills.

After graduating from Suwannee in 1997, Davis played four years at the University of Florida and has spent the last eight years playing in the league with the Cleveland Browns (seven years) and Denver Broncos (one year). A free agent, Davis signed a two-year deal on March 15 to play for the Bills.   

Spiller graduated from Union County High in 2006 and recently from Clemson University in 2010. After leaving Clemson with over 7000 career yards and 53 touchdowns and 31 school records, Spiller was named the ACC Player of the Year, finished sixth in the Heisman race and was selected No. 9 overall in the 2010 NFL draft by the Bills.   

The kids were taught catching, speed and position drills during the camp from 9 a.m. till noon.

Afterwards, both Davis and Spiller spoke to the kids and then fielded questions.

“I stressed to them the importance of academics and being accountable for things,” Spiller said. “Kids these days want things given to them, I think a lot of them paid attention. Always work hard, good things come to those who work hard, Don’t let anyone tell them you can’t play.”

Spiller and Davis also gave out autographed jerseys of themselves and Champ Bailey to selected kids from a drawing.

Davis was expecting other friends to help him on Saturday at the fun day, banquet and celebrity basketball game.

Among the names mentioned that he expected to attend were Kelly Jennings (Seahawks), Bruce Johnson (Giants), Gerard Warren (Patriots) and Jabar Gaffney (Broncos).

Best friend Alex Brown (Saints) was unable to attend as were other friends due to NFL Organized Training camps going on.

After talking to the kids, the kids were anxious to ask them questions about what it takes to the get to the NFL, what famous players Davis had sacked, how will CJ feel after scoring his first career touchdown, what kind of speed drills do you both do and what is the off-season like.

After the camp, Davis took the kids bowling later that night, had a fun day planned for Saturday and also had a celebrity basketball game organized for Saturday night at the Suwannee High gym.