Missionary work 'a risk worth taking' for Fins

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http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/football/miami-dolphins/story/617296.html

Missionary work 'a risk worth taking' for Fins

BY DAVID J. NEAL
Miami Herald

You might think nothing could come close to preparing Dolphins quarterback John Beck for the team and individual disaster that was his rookie season. You would be wrong.

No sane NFL player likes training camp. But at least four Dolphins can think of two years with longer days, less food, almost as much continual activity and more physical deterioration that threatened their football careers.

After high school or early in college, Beck, long-snapper/defensive lineman John Denney, fourth-round draft pick Shawn Murphy and undrafted free agent linebacker Kelly Poppinga went on an unpaid two-year Mormon mission, which Mormon men can do anytime between ages 19 and 27. And they couldn't be prouder of those two years or how it helped them grow as people, and even as football players.

''People always talk about testing yourself to find out what you're made of,'' Beck said. '[Dolphins] Coach [Tony] Sparano talks about, `I want to find out what this team is made of, I want to put challenges in your face to see how you're going to react.' Those of us guys who have been on missions, that's a difficult time. It's not easy. It's kind of like training camp for two years.''

Said Murphy, a guard, ``It's two years where you put your life on hold and help out with the church and spiritual things. Also, in the community, you walk around and try to help people out. You try to spend two years in service of other people instead of yourself.''

A SEPARATE LIFE

That also is two years of starting the day studying the Bible and The Book of Mormon rather than playbooks.

Two years of 12-minute runs and wind sprints replaced by 12 hours (at least) of walking and biking; two years of living on premission savings and maybe family or local church assistance; two years of sneers and public ridicule for ministering or just standing out in a white shirt, dark slacks and a tie; and two years without TV, movies or contact with home, except letters and Mother's Day and Christmas Day phone calls.

That is six or seven days a week. On an off day, missionaries took care of laundry and errands. Even then, it couldn't be all about them.

''We'd do service every day, but that was the day we'd specifically find somebody that needed maybe some work done in their home or issues going on in the community,'' Poppinga said. ``We'd help out with floods, earthquakes, any of that kind of stuff.''

Said Denney: ``Could be doing janitorial work for a local old folks home. Could be working with a school, helping the teacher out.''

And, as Poppinga and Denney are quick to point out, going is a decision. No edict requires young Mormon men or women to go on a mission.

The NFL's most famous Mormon, Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, a direct descendant of Brigham Young, didn't go on one. But he is heavily involved in charity and church in the Bay Area and has been quoted as saying he wants to be a missionary some day (seniors can go on missions once they have an empty nest). And, as Denney points out, you can leave early if the mission becomes too much.

Missionaries can't choose where they are assigned. All four Dolphins spoke only English when they left. Now, Denney (sent to North New Jersey) and Poppinga (Ecuador) speak Spanish fluently. Murphy (Brazil) and Beck (Portugal) could converse in Portuguese if they desired.

As they plugged into the local language, they unplugged from football.

Beck knew he had been away for a long time when, after his mission, he was watching the 2002 University of Miami-Pittsburgh game on ESPN and thinking, ``This sport looks weird. It looks weird to me.''

The only football Murphy heard about was fútbol -- the 2002 World Cup would have been ubiquitous in Brazil even without the Brazilians winning their fifth title. He had left as a 285-pound defensive end for Ricks (Utah) Junior College. He came back in 2004 as a 240-pounder without a position or a team -- Ricks' football program was eliminated after Murphy's only season.

STAYING PREPARED

Nobody comes back in football shape. Denney tried to time his mission to maximize the preparation period for the following season at BYU. Beck and Poppinga woke up a half-hour early on their missions, at 5:30 a.m., to work out. Poppinga fashioned a crude barbell out of cement for curling and had push-up bars.

Still, it is not pounding food and pumping iron the way college football coaches prefer.

Poppinga said the potential physical disintegration was a problem for Oregon State. The recruiting period required Beck to establish how badly he wanted to go on a mission.

'That's when I really had to put my decision to work, because I had Pac-10 schools who offered me scholarships where they were saying, `We're only going to give it to you if you don't go on a mission,' '' Beck said. 'And I told them, `I always planned on going on a mission.' ''

Beck's high school coach gave advice Beck didn't take.

'He said, `Tell them you're not going to go. Go to their school for a year. Then tell them you've changed your mind and then go,' '' Beck said. 'But I said, `I'm not going to do that. I've decided ever since I was little, I'm going, I'm going when I'm 19, and that's final.' ''

Murphy said, ``It definitely was a risk to put your career on the line like that, but I felt like it was a risk worth taking.''

None of the four is sorry he went.

''My missionary companion and I got held up one night at gunpoint by some kids,'' Murphy said. 'It was an area that was a bad area that other missionaries had been robbed before and people got killed every day, so it was a pretty drug-ridden area. They took my watch and my wallet. I went home and just wondering, `What am I doing there? This is pretty dangerous out here.' But even that, looking back, was an experience that helped me grow, helped me mature a little bit and help me realize what's going on in the world.''

Although Poppinga had to do some muscular reconstruction, he thought he had built himself up mentally while in Ecuador.

''It helped my study habits in school, it helped my study habits in my playbook and really put me in a perspective that football really isn't that tough, man,'' he said. ``There's a lot tougher things you could be doing in life.

``Doing what I did for those two years is a lot tougher than what I'm doing right now.''

"IT'll ALL BE WORTH IT"

And Beck's mission turned out to be good preparation. In the 1-15 season, he started four games, passed for one touchdown and three interceptions, lost five fumbles, and then saw the Dolphins draft Chad Henne in the second round in April.

''I always say when you're on the mission, you have to face a lot of rejection,'' Beck said. 'A lot of people don't want to talk to you. When you walk down the streets, people throw stuff at you, they cuss at you. Where I was at in Portugal, some people liked to swerve their cars in front of us, kind of joke around like, `I'm going to hit you.' Ridicule, all that kind of stuff, it was just normal, you just had to work through it.

''Let's take that into last year where a lot of things were going bad for us,'' he said. ``It was tough, but we had to just keep on working kind of with the goal in mind that even though it's tough, we're going to keep working and things will be good. That's kind of how it is on a mission.

``You'll sometimes work, work, work, work, day after day after day, tons of rejection, tons of rejection, then you find one person who really does want to talk to you, who it really does matter to, that makes it all worth it. For me, last year was a tough year, but I'm still working, I've still got my nose to the grinder, because this year could be good, and it'll all be worth it.

``This year will be good, and it'll all be worth it.''