“It was survival when we’d go up there (as players),” Dan said, recalling his days as a player.ĭuring Kush’s heyday in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, his preseason camp was torturous: Two straight weeks of three-a-day practices on muddy fields with little sleep and, of course, brutal treks up “Mount Kush,” the peak of one of the towering hills that surrounded the campsite.įormer Arizona State linebacker and College Football Hall of Famer Bob Breunig, who went to Camp T three times between 1972-74, likened it to military boot camp. The picturesque forest setting and cool fall temperatures could be misleading. For some players, it became the football equivalent of hell.
Most stories from the early days at Camp T, though, drum up different emotions.
“They used some child labor,” he chuckled.
“We’d sit on the back of the drag and when they’d run the drag by the creek, they’d stop and it was our job to pull the rocks out of the drag and throw them over into the creek.” It had already been roughly leveled out but there was still some run-and-drag,” Dan said. “The coaches and some of the other coaches’ kids were putting in the grass on the field or prepping the field. When he just 6 years old, he tagged along with his dad and the school’s other coaches and their families to put the finishing touches on the first field to be laid among the pines at the site. Without a field, ASU football will still make trip to Camp Tontozonaĭan remembers the camp’s earliest days. A lot of people know about going to Tontozona.” “(Camp T) is one of (our) traditions in collegiate sports, or at least football. “A lot of people have moved here from another area so we don’t have some of the long-running tradition that you have in Michigan or Ohio, Indiana, some of those places,” said Dan Kush, Frank’s son who was a kicker at ASU in the ‘70s. It holds a special place in program lore. Since then, it’s become the unofficial start of football season, the early August signal that the offseason is over. (We) want to keep that alive.”Ĭamp T’s historical roots trace back almost 60 years to when the late Frank Kush, the longest-tenured and winningest coach in program history, first took his team in 1960. “Maybe (we’ll) have a walk-through, a little meeting or something, have them walk the hill, do a little deal,” Edwards said. I think that’s important,” Edwards said during Pac-12 Media Day, when he announced that ASU would travel to Camp T (or as Edwards calls it, “Camp Kush”) during Wednesday’s off-day. “We’re going to make sure these young guys understand the history and legacy of going up there.
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