By Brett Grassmuck
Staff Writer

During the first week of training camp in Mequon, Wis., Concordia University student and Rams training intern Samantha Bloxdorf was walking innocently through the back of the dining hall.

She was immediately beckoned by first-round draft pick Chris Long and seventh-round selection David Vobora to the front of the hall. Bloxdorf was then serenaded by the two rookies with the “Top Gun” version of “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling,” by the Righteous Brothers.

“I just wanted some carrot cake,” Bloxdorf said.

Welcome to the NFL.

Each season rookies are made to perform a song for the veterans during one of the team dinners. It was Long’s and Vobora’s night to go. Bloxdorf just had bad timing for dessert.

“It was just fun,” Bloxdorf said. “(It was) definitely memorable.”

Fellow Concordia student-turned Rams training intern Lydia Steubs is usually accompanying her friend Bloxdorf, but was happy to have been anywhere but in front of a dining hall full of NFL football players that night.

Bloxdorf and Steubs are just two of a host of Rams training interns. They were joined by Chad Moeller, another Concorida student, Jake Brooks, a student at Southeast Missouri State University and Eric DePorter from Eastern Illinois, the collegiate home of Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, for the duration of Rams training camp.

The Missouri and Illinois students began training camp by making the trip to Mequon, and in turn the Concordia students ended their first NFL experience by making the trip back to St. Louis for the final two weeks of camp. That includes missing the first week of classes for the Rams preseason finale at Kansas City.

“We’ll have a little bit to make up this weekend, but it’s definitely worth it,” Steubs said.

The Rams final preseason game served as the finale for the students’ internships, with Bloxdorf and Steubs making the trip with the team to Arrowhead Stadium.

“It’s been a good crew this year, going away to training camp, a new site, having to get used to a new location, it made it easy,” head trainer Jim Anderson said. “They were a good, hard-working staff, and they all got along real well. It just helped make our jobs easier knowing that they were there.”

Each year during training camp, the trainers accept applications for a crew of interns to help during training camp. This year, the invitation was extended to Concordia University in order to bring in some people familiar with the lay of the land.

“It’s nice to have somebody from the local college, because then you have a contact, someone that’s familiar with everybody up there,” Anderson said. “It makes it easier when you can do that. We don’t always do it that way, but it worked out. They have a really good athletic training department up there at the school. It just so happened that these three (Bloxdorf, Moeller and Steubs) were available to work with us this summer.”

The students worked with Anderson, assistant trainer Dake Walden and training assistant James Lomax, helping tape the players before practice and make sure they stayed hydrated throughout.

Although they learned a lot about their craft, they learned even more about the NFL players.

“It’s been really great getting to know everyone,” Bloxdorf said. “The players are a lot nicer than I expected and easy to get along with.”

Steubs added that “the whole Rams community has been very welcoming to us, very helpful and very willing to do whatever to help us out and make us feel comfortable here.”

Brooks, a native of Hillsboro, Mo., was in familiar territory when the team returned to St. Louis, and his celebrity status was quite a bit elevated.

“If (my family) saw me on TV, I’d get like 15 text messages, and my parents would call me,” Brooks said. “It was funny.”

Bloxdorf and Steubs on the other hand went from the familiar comforts of Concordia to a hotel across the street from the Russell Training Center. They managed to find their way around St. Louis in their short time here, making a stop at Busch Stadium for a Cardinals game.

Of course, it happened to be against their home-town Milwaukee Brewers, and the two interns cheered on the Brew Crew.

“Not  me,” said Brooks, a Cardinals fan. “I had to stay strong there, even though we lost 12-0.”

Any internship is an evaluation of a profession for a person’s future. Most of the training interns knew professional sports is where they wanted to end up, and the internship with the Rams is just more fuel for the fire.

For Steubs, it was the internship that won her over.

“I didn’t originally think that professional sports would be the kind of thing I’d be interested in,” Steubs said. “I thought maybe more of a clinical setting, but now that I’ve had this experience, I think while I’m still young, I think I should definitely go for it.”