The game of football demands mental and physical toughness along with discipline. University of Arkansas offensive line target Andrew Chamblee is well equipped in those areas thanks to his father Jonathan, a military veteran of 27 years.
Andrew Chamblee, 6-6, 290 pounds, of Maumelle has accumulated scholarship offers from Arkansas, Virginia Tech, Tennessee, Mississippi State, TCU, Missouri, Kansas and others as a sophomore. He visited Fayetteville on Feb. 1 and has the Hogs as his leader.
Jonathan Chamblee was born in Kinston, N.C., and lived there and Virginia during his childhood. He joined the North Carolina national guard as a junior in high school was deployed for Desert Shield and Desert Storm wars. A year after returning from Desert Storm, he joined the U.S. Army and was based at Fort Bragg, Fort Knox and Germany, where he served two deployments to the Balkans.
Military life and the structure that came with it helped shaped the elder Chamblee.
"I learned a lot about the world and learned a lot about myself," he said. "You learn to be very adaptable in the military. It just makes you more resilient."
In the early 2000s, he left the Army and joined the Kentucky Army National Guard and eventually transferred to Camp Robinson in North Little Rock before retiring as a sergeant first class in September of 2014.
"People talk about being a part of something larger than yourself that's what the military is, and that's what I try to convey to [Andrew] when you look to participate in a team or be a part of your community," Jonathan said.
A mission in the Balkans was one of many instances the elder Chamblee learned about mental and physical toughness.
"For about a four-day period, I was rolling off of maybe there to four hours of sleep, if you count cat naps, but at that time that's what the mission dictated," Jonathan said. "There were people counting on us to do our job so they could do their job. You just do it. The guy to the left of you is just as tired, worn out and burned out as you are."
Mental toughness was in the forefront of life lessons Andrew has learned from his father.
"I definitely like to say mentally tough no matter what is going on," Andrew said. "You have to have your mind prepared for the worse or the best."
He learned a valuable lesson in the ninth grade at Maumelle.
"I transferred late, I couldn't play ninth-grade football," Andrew said. "I had to play JV and I was pretty upset but I was able to practice with varsity and play a little bit in JV games, but I started getting hurt a lot and I figure because my mental state wasn't as tough as I needed it to be."
National recruiting analyst Tom Lemming of CBS Sports Network rates Chamblee a 4-star plus prospect and will have him ranked him in his top 100 for the 2022 class when released.
His father reminds Andrew opposing players will look to make a name for themselves when going up against him.
"With Dad telling me that, it makes me push myself harder knowing that I'm going to be targeted and I have to put on the best show I can," Andrew said.
Jonathan has taught his son tips in conditioning he's learned from the military. He and Andrew were going to the Camp Robinson gym before the coronavirus pandemic stopped that.
"Their workouts look pretty intense," Andrew said. "it looks like it's a lot of combat stuff, so it's lot more movement."
The workouts were eye opening for Andrew.
"I would have him do different things for 45 minutes, and then I would say now lets go work out and he was 'That wasn't the workout?' I said, no son that was the warm up," Jonathan said.
Andrew admits he wasn't enjoying the workout.
"I was thinking can we go home yet?" Andrew said.
Recently, Jonathan came up with the idea of Andrew pulling him in his GMC Sierra 1500 in their neighborhood.
"We got a rope and I was like what is he going to do with that rope?" Andrew said. "He told me to come here, and he tied a rope like a harness on me and we just got to work. He hooked me up and I started rolling.
"He was in the driver's seat. I didn't want to do it because I was like man I've already done an hour work of agility and my legs are already kind of burning and my mindset was weak at that time and he was like come on lets go."
Jonathan received a harness on Friday to replace the make-shift rope harness. The sight of seeing Andrew pulling his father and the truck attracted the attention of neighbors.
"You'll see them pull out their chairs and sit out and watch," Jonathan said. "There were probably seven-eight people out that day. One of my neighbors sent my wife a text and said, 'You know your son is tied to a truck?'"
E-mail Richard Davenport at rdavenport@arkansasonline.com
Sports on 04/12/2020