Darrian Bell was once the kid in the camp T-shirt, so he knew exactly what his first football camp should look like.

The focus was on fun at the camp Bell led last week at Danville High School, because that’s what he remembered most from the camps of his childhood.

Bell, a 2020 Danville graduate who plays at Savannah State University, returned to the practice field where he once attended youth camps and tried to make his camp as much fun for the 30-plus kids who attended as those long-ago camps were for him.

“I just remember having so much fun and just being excited to play football,” Bell said.

Bell brought the fun to the free camp that he hosted with the help of Danville coaches and players and members of his own family, and he also brought an understanding of what it meant to be in the shoes of the kids who attended.

He recalled going to camps at Danville perhaps 15 years ago and how he felt when he was around players who were on the high school team at the time.

“I was just having fun, knowing that I’d be in their shoes one day,” he said. “And I know that how I looked up to them, (that’s how these kids) would look up to me, so I’m just trying to carry myself in a way so that they can follow me, too.”

The Saturday morning camp was born out of Bell’s desire to give back to the program that helped him succeed and to help potential future players develop a love for the game.

“I just want them to leave here with excitement, wanting to come back out here and keep coming,” he said. “’Mom, please sign me up for football.’ ‘Mom, can we go buy a football?’”

Bell, who was the leading tackler on the last Danville team to win a state championship in 2017, is entering his second season as a graduate transfer at Savannah State after playing for three seasons at Louisville.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in sports administration and aspires to run his own athletic facility someday, and he said this camp is a good step along his career path.

“I started thinking small, start with my own community,” he said.

But this camp was not about furthering his career goals as much as it was about attempting to spark interest in the next generation of Danville football players who might help restore a struggling program to prominence.

“I just want to get some more kids out, some more kids involved,” he said.

Bell and his father Maurice approached first-year Danville coach Steve Stonebraker with the idea of hosting a camp, and Stonebraker said he couldn’t think of a better person to represent what Danville football should be about.

“One of the things I’ve said since I took the job is we want people in Danville to be ‘Danville devoted,’ and Darrian proves that he is by doing this,” Stonebraker said. “It’s so great for the young people in our community to have somebody like Darrian putting this on where they can look up to him, because he’s such a great young man with what he’s done academically, being a 4.0 student, already having a bachelor’s degree, working on his master’s. (He’s) a great role model for young people to emulate.”

Stonebraker said he was also grateful to Bell because having him run the program’s youth camp freed Stonebraker up to work on other things he is trying to get in place prior to his first season with the Admirals.

“I made sure they were going to have what they needed … and it’s allowed me to … put my focus elsewhere to really get some things in place for this first season,” Stonebraker said.

Stonebraker and his players and coaches were very visible at the camp. Current and former players guided the kids through drills, and Stonebraker tried to meet every child who participated.

But the heavy lifting was done by Bell, who organized the camp, solicited sponsors and donations and did his best to ensure the kids left with some of the same love for football that he still has.

“I love coming out here. I love whenever I go play,” he said. “I have fun every single day I go out there, and I just try not to take it for granted.”