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The NFL has a program called Salute to Service. Salute to Service is a yearround effort to Honor, Empower, and Connect our nation’s service members, veterans, and their families. It is grounded in deep partnership with nonprofits and organizations that support the military community in the United States and across the world. The NFL extends its appreciation of the military community through special moments of recognition at games and events and visits to military bases both domestically and internationally throughout the year. Since 2011, more than $51 million has been raised for the league’s military nonprofit partners.

Each year, all 32 teams host a Salute to Service game around Veteran’s day to thank and honor local service men and women at a home game. The Vikings Salute to Service game is the November 21 game against the Packers. Each team has their own local angle that highlights a few military focused non-profits in their region with Vikings alumni and office personnel on location. This year, the Minnesota Vikings sent four alumni to the United Heroes League Heroes Course, and I was lucky enough to receive an invite to cover it.

Eddy McDaniel, Ronyell Whitaker, Esera Tuaolo and Robert Blanton were the four Vikings player representatives that were part of the event. Eddy, Ron and Esera were already there when I arrived, Robert had a small delay. The groups mingled a bit getting to know each other, talking about what being there meant to them. Eddy was being the class clown pretending to whine about having to do the course.

The setup was simple, one player ran the course with a current or former member of each of the branches of the armed forces and a teen that has a parent in the military. Each team, Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines were scored on their completion of each obstacle or attempted completion in some cases. The Vikings Media Team recorded video of the guys going through the course and did post interviews with the players and their teams.

The guys were given a small heads up that they would be running an obstacle course, and that was about it. What they did not know was that they would be receiving instructions from a former Drill Sergeant by the name of Guy Sing. Guy is a great human, do not let the Drill Sargeant piece scare you even though it did get into the heads of the alumni.

Guy started kicked off the event with a calisthenics session to get everyone warmed up. The look on the faces of the Vikings alumni was priceless when Guy started barking out his orders. Of course, it was explained that they were doing this to warm up for safety reasons.

The Heroes Course is no joke. It is a standardized military obstacle course designed to test and mess with the people that run it. While being a very physical test of the human body, it is also a test of the mind. It truly messes with your head.

Whitaker, a defensive back for the Vikings that faced guys like some no name guy that wore 84 and went by Randy Moss was doing well on the course until the 40-foot tower climb. Whitaker froze, staring up at it. Then he started pacing and trying to collect himself. At first, he was standing near me so of course I had to take the jab.

“Ron! What are you doing? Are you afraid of heights?” I joked.

He put his arm around me “Bruce, man, I am terrified… like…” he tried to calm his breathing, “TERR.. IH…FIIIEED of heights.”

That is when I realized he really wasn’t messing around, this obstacle was messing with him bad. But here’s the deal. While this course messes with you in ways you would never expect, it also brings out the best in you. Which is exactly what it is meant to do. Challenge you in ways you never thought you would be challenged so that you can overcome those challenges and be a stronger person. Funny how that coincides with what the Army slogan was all those years, “Be the best that you can be, in the Army” What I did not know was Ron made it very early so UHL President, Shane Hudella gave him a tour of the course. “When I first came out, and he took me on a tour of it, the first thing I say to myself was I’m not going to do this, I had already defeated myself before I even attempted it, you know, but at the same time, having the military support to let me know that I could do it before I even got harnessed up or do anything and just chirping at me, gave me an internal feeling where I thought to myself, You know what, I can do this. I can do this, you know, it’s no different than my teammates. And when I go out there, hey, I can cover Randy Moss or Megatron or somebody like that. And then you get one of your teammates that says yes, you can. But getting it from a person when I’m on their turf is next level. That’s the part that my mind gets you a little bit you know what I mean? Because I’m on their turf, they’re saying I can do it, I must be able to do this, because they’re telling me I can do this. No different than a teammate in a stadium telling me that I can do it. And that’s what helped me overcome my fears. And even when I got to the top, I kept thinking to myself, I can’t do this, I can’t do this. And then as soon as I looked down, I knew I couldn’t do it because my hands start shaking, my legs start shaking, my ears was shaking. And then I just kept hearing ya’ll say you got this. And I put the one leg over and I knew I could get it. But just having that support and having them in my mind was enough. And I was able to achieve that. And I feel so good about myself right now.”

The course did not just get into Ron’s head, both Eddy and Esera had their moments too, both happened to be at the angled wall. Climbing a wall that is six feet tall is not easy when it is straight up and down. Climbing that same wall at a 30-degree angle messes with your head. You cannot use the same approach as a straight wall. Both Esera and Eddy learned that. The leaders of their group explained each obstacle and demonstrated the easiest ways to do them. The angled wall instructions were very simple, grab the wall, swing one leg up to hook the ankle and roll up and over. Both guys over thought it and struggled over and over. Then, when they finally shut their brain off and did what was explained, they both made it over with ease.

I asked Eddy, was the course more of a mental or physical challenge? “No, no, this is a combined of both. Mentally, mentally, I’m already there. But it’s more physical to me because it’s, it’s, it deals with all your muscle parts, and you have to be able to coordinate and put them all together. The the hardest two to me was the monkey bars and the rope climb. I know, I’m not gonna be able to do that. And so those two was the hardest one. But the rest, I was like, Okay, I’m gonna try. And we did a great job as a team coming together. And like I’m saying, I got a kid with me, Jordan, he did a great job. He started off slow. And he probably finished by like three or four of the station that he he started with. And so that was great. And with me, I think I did four, I finished four.”

Esera was the biggest guy of the bunch, height and general size. He looks like he could still play in the NFL at 53, he never gave up and was always smiling. “Well, first of all, I’m 300 and they’re like 165 apiece, and, you know, sitting there like jumping over stuff, and I’m trying to get to know two of my teammates, you know, where they come from and what division they are in. I guess now that we’re doing the last obstacle, this kind of brings us together, getting to know each other and hopefully, you know, down the line we can hang out.”

What did the guys learn and what did it mean to them that it was a Salute to Military Service members event?

Eddy, “It means a lot to me because all my uncle’s was in service, I had three uncles that was in the Marines and two uncles that was that was in army. So you know, just listening to the stories of my uncles that was in the army, when they come back home, that’s great. And so all this remind me of family, all this remind me being a kid growing up, as you heard, I say, the army guys tells the story, the Marine guy didn’t tell no story, you did even joke with them, you didn’t even ask them for your water, you know. So this is great to come out here. And I hope that we get more people to come out here, I’ll probably bring up some guys out here, myself next year. This is a great event. I never did anything like this. Like I told someone, this reminded me I was a little kid in the woods, climbing trees and stuff like that when your mom, your grandmother tell you get out of the house. And so they already have the stations up for you.”

Esera, “It’s one of those things where I think it’s something that… It’s like playing football, right? I mean, people think it’s easy, right? And until you get out there and then you start doing it, you just have a better respect for the guys that do this to defend our country and stuff like that. All the training that they go through. It’s being here right now and going through all these obstacles on the course is one of the things they do. We definitely have much more respect for every one of those service members.”

Ron, “It means a lot, it means, you know, a great deal of significance, I look at it as where guys like us are able to do our job because of guys like them, you know what I mean? It gives us an opportunity to know that we can go out here and achieve anything that we want to achieve, but still not at a level, like the military of course. You know, these guys do it when they don’t have 80,000 people screaming for them in the bright lights, and all that. This stuff is all deep inside of them, and what they want to bring to the table collectively, in order for them to be successful, you know, and being out here today with those guys, having them cheer me on. It’s next level it was next level.”

At the end of the day, there was a mini trophy presentation. Each of the participants received a medal for completing the course and one team was declared overall winner. The winning branch was the Navy with Esera as the alumni.

The Heroes Course is a great opportunity for team building for any business or group out there that wants to have a fun time being challenged. You will get dirty; you will get tested and you will end up with great memories. The Vikings alumni had no idea what they signed up for and everyone performed admirably during the afternoon. We all made new friends out of strangers, we were all equals on the course, and it helped bring attention to the goals of United Heroes League, to support military kids through sports.

The climbing tower is more of a mental test than it is a physical one. Yes, the rungs of the ladder get further apart to test your physicality, but the mind is tested with the heights. Ronyell Whitaker was defeated the moment he saw it. “Having the military support to let me know that I could do it before I even got harnessed up or do anything and just chirping at me, gave me an internal feeling where I thought to myself, You know what, I can do this.” Here Guy Sing facilitated the obstacle for Whitaker while everyone at the bottom yelled in support. Photo by Bruce Karnick.

Esera Tuaolo navigated one of the most physically difficult obstacles, the over under pyramid. Participants have to snake their way sideways over and under each of the 4×4’s up and then down the pyramid. It is much more difficult than it looks. Photo by Bruce Karnick.