Training at dawn, serving all day: Camryn Bynum’s offseason mission to the Philippines
· Yahoo Sports
INDIANAPOLIS – Camryn Bynum’s final six weeks of the offseason will look different than most.
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The wee hours of the morning will be similar for the Colts' free safety – finding a world-class gym to get a traditional workout in -- but then he hits the football field next door with some of his closest friends. They currently train to be professional flag football players. Jokingly, Bynum says he uses them as his own personal scout team.
Charity work, then, will occupy most of the rest of his day, right up until he has to report back to Westfield for the start of Colts training camp in late-July, and that work couldn’t come at a more dire time.
Next week, Bynum will fly to the Philippines, where he and his wife Lalaine have family ties, just days after the country was rocked by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that has left at least 35 people dead, injured hundreds more and crumpling an untold number of homes while destroying the power grid and leaving clean, fresh water scarce.
Through his foundation, the Bynum Faith Foundation, the 27-year-old former fourth-round pick who is heading into his second year in Indianapolis, routinely spends large chunks of time back in the Philippines each offseason. The natural disaster that arrived on the country’s doorstep earlier this week makes that work all the more important, he said.
“I hate to see it happen, but I’m glad that I can go out there and actually help in-person. I think it’s going to be impactful to bring a lot of people and a lot of eyes to know the destruction that’s happened there,” Bynum said minutes after the close of the Colts’ three-day mandatory veteran mini-camp Thursday. “We’re going to put on a lot of outreaches, and then we’ll assess the need of the area.
“I know they haven’t had power for the last few days, and there’s obviously no clean water with all the pipes breaking, so we’ll bring that out there and do a big outreach with our foundation, just to be ale to help them and meet (the need) however we can.”
Bynum said his family has not been personally affected, but some of his closest friends in the country have homes that were rocked by the severe earthquake.
“There’s been a lot of people who died, unfortunately, but all the people that I know are healthy and out there making a difference now however they can,” Bynum said. “And even though a lot of people’s houses are messed up, it’s a community thing, so everybody’s out there trying to help bring other people back up.
“You see a lot of people coming together during this hard time. That’s the whole spirit of the Philippines.”
Bynum, the sixth-year veteran, says these next six weeks that precede what amounts to a well over five month grind – and six months or more for those who make deep playoff runs – are always a “weird break.” Fellow defensive back Sauce Gardner described it Thursday as “testing all our accountability.”
“We all have a lot of time, but at the same time, we’ve got to be workin’,” the All-Pro corner said Thursday.
For Bynum, the work with his charity is a way to mentally escape the grind of around-the-clock football, but even half a world away, his day job always comes first. Success over the next month-plus comes, he said, with prioritizing his workouts to start his day and doing exactly what he’d be doing if he were home in Indiana, just in a different setting.
“When I’m in the Philippines, I have a world-class facility 15 minutes away from my house, so it’s kinda perfect. It’s where all the Olympic athletes train out there, and I have a bunch of flag football players I get to train with,” he said. “I bring my scout cards and make them run certain routes.
“This is a weird break, because you have to get time off, and you just split it, knowing that you’re ‘off’ but you have to get that work in, a few hours every day, and then you can enjoy your time off so you can come back mentally prepared for the whole season. I think it’s a good time to get our minds off being here every single day, but the vision doesn’t change when you’re on break for me, personally. It’s down time from being in the building, but this is the busiest time of the offseason, for sure.”
Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts' Camryn Bynum to deliver aid to Philippines after deadly earthquake