Rick Upchurch - Rare Breed

Rare Breed Sport & Leadership Foundation was founded by Rick & Donna Upchurch to conduct not only Sport Camps, but to mentor youths in special programs steered toward their specific needs. These programs are ran not only in Colorado, but throughout the United States!
Football is not the only sport at Rare Breed Camps. Rick will design a camp for your specific needs! Basketball, Soccer, Baseball, Track, you name it! He will bring in not only national sport figures, but local sport stars as well!
Contact Rick @ www.upchurch80NFL.com for more information on Rare Breed Sport Camps and Mentoring Services!
Rick’s motto is “Getting A Grip On Life” and he feels all youths are……..”Rare Breeds’.

Editor’s Note: Rick Upchurch is the founder of Rare Breed Sports and Leadership Foundation, a youth mentoring and tutoring program. He retired from the Denver Broncos in 1974.

UPCHURCH: It’s a strong name. You’re a rare breed. What does that tell you? It tells you that you’re something special. You’re different from everybody else.

UPCHURCH: Our mission statement is to give our kids and our community a vision of hope, through sports and a tutoring and mentoring program.

UPCHURCH: I am sure there are, but the difference with us is that we use former professional athletes in all of our camps and at all of our speaking engagements. I have that connection with a lot of those folks. I think that is really the special aspect of it.

UPCHURCH: Just here in Colorado, we have one in Pueblo, one in Craig, one in Carbondale and we just opened one in Cañon City. As we continue to grow, we hope to expand to different cities. We just signed a contract with the United States Air Force Recreation Centers. The first camp we’ll be doing is at Peterson Air Force Base. Why hold on to a treasure? You might as well share that treasure, whether it’s helping a family or helping a community.

UPCHURCH: We fund them through the private sector, community businesses, fund raisers.

UPCHURCH: We do a lot of fundraising and talking with the different private businesses. From day one, Gold Crest Realty and Randy Thurston have been in our corner 120 percent, along with other businesses here in Pueblo. Royal Electrical has been in our corner. Loaf ‘N Jug has been in our corner. Commercial Builders has been in our corner. We go out and do a lot of talking with a lot of different businesses. We show them the importance of working with our youth at the grass-roots level. But we also show them a way to get their businesses out into homes. It reminds people that these folks are out in the community helping us with our kids, so we need to help them out and patronize their businesses.

UPCHURCH: Actually, it’s just my wife Donna and me. We have developed a board of directors. We go out and get the guys that help us out with the coaching aspect. But, basically, it’s just me and my wife.

UPCHURCH: We pay them, because they leave their jobs or whatever they are doing to put forth this effort.

UPCHURCH: I love working with kids. I had success in what I did, playing professional sports. Why hold on to a treasure? You might as well share that treasure, whether it’s helping a family or helping a community. If you help a young man, you help that young man go out and help another young man. Now the community becomes stronger. If the community becomes stronger, your state becomes stronger. If the state becomes stronger, now the United States of America becomes stronger. Right now, we’re fighting to keep ourselves together….our families, our community, the very fiber of the United States of America.

PBJ: What can you say about the kids in the program? Are there any success stories that really stand out in your mind?

UPCHURCH: There are a lot of them…we had one young man who couldn’t even do a jumping jack. By the time he finished our camp, he was doing it, and he was our most improved player. Now, he’s doing well in school. He’s playing sports. That’s what I’m talking about, when kids do well in school because we’ve had an opportunity to sit down and talk to them about our life experiences, and what they need to do to be a positive influence in the community.

UPCHURCH: We pull them off to the side and say, "Now, you have to be the role model. It starts at home. After the kids leave us, they have to deal with you." We’re a support system.

UPCHURCH: We want to continue to be a positive force in the Pueblo community and continue to grow. Some of the things we do go far beyond here. We would like to go national, even international. We have a good foundation and some good people. We want this to be a program that evolves out of the Pueblo community.

Anyone interested in becoming involved with Rare Breed can call Rick Upchurch at 560-9000 or upchurch80nfl@aol.com.