Rookie defensive tackle Frank Okam tries his hand at cornerback during the Texans' visit to ProVision Charter School, where they helped to install a new football field on Tuesday.
A day after their team put on a show at Reliant Stadium on Monday Night Football, the Texans' rookies helped to install a football field at a nearby school for fifth- through eighth-grade boys.
The project at ProVision Charter School, located in nearby Sunnyville, was part of the NFL's Play60 efforts to encourage youth to play for 60 minutes a day to help decrease childhood obesity. One hundred BMC Software employees and several of the Lady Texans, a group of player and staff spouses, helped the Texans' first-year players stripe the new field, plant flower beds and build wooden benches for the sidelines.
"(We're) just coming out here to help out with the community," running back Steve Slaton said. "We just helped donate a field and come and spend some time with the kids."
Slaton was joined by teammates Duane Brown, Antwaun Molden, Frank Okam, Dominique Barber, Jesse Nading, Alex Brink and Darnell Jenkins.
{QUOTE}Okam, Slaton and Texans mascot TORO christened the brand new field by facing off against excited students in football pass-and-catch drills.
"It's very important, because the fans are the community," Slaton said. "The better the community does, the better we do."
ProVision created an enterprise academy to accompany its charter school, along with a manhood development program that will focus on character education for its students. Built on three tracts of land that were purchased several years ago, the school opened last week. The new football field provided the finishing touches at the facility's grand opening on Tuesday.
"It's exciting because we want to be and hope that we're a fabric of the community," Alan Hassenfleu of ProVision said. "We're not only going to affect the lives of the young men that go to school and participate in our programs, but we're also going to affect the community at large and hopefully be a beacon of hope and (provide) activities and football games and baseball games and all sorts of things that we can do here in helping this community to thrive and be the potential that it needs to be."
The Texans and ProVision partnered with sponsors BMC Software, King Ranch Turf, Sequor Foundation and Local Incentives Support Corporation (LISC) to build the field at the Sunnyville school.
