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On Thursday, the Minnesota Vikings participated in the building of something, that being their annual playground build at Cedar Lake Elementary School.
On Friday, a few members of the Vikings supported a slightly different cause in a much different way.
Several members of the Vikings, including guard Alex Boone and special teams coach Mike Priefer, led a group of Vikings to Drive a Tank in Kasota, which is about an hour south of the Twin Cities. The outing was to support a charity called Warrior Rising, which helps veteran entrepreneurs to get their businesses off the ground.
"We work with a lot of NFL teams, and there's no NFL team more supportive of the military than the Minnesota Vikings," said Jason Van Camp, Warrior Rising Executive Director.
Among the activities that the Vikings’ players and coaches took part in, which you can see in the video above (courtesy of KEYC in Mankato), were driving tanks, firing a 50 cal gun, and using flamethrowers. As you can see in the video, it looks like Boone might be having a little too much fun with that last one. There was an also an auction with the players and coaches to raise money for the non-profit organization.
Warrior Rising currently supports 10 veteran entrepreneurs, and they hope to increase that number to 100 or more by this time next year.
Again, it’s great to see the Vikings getting out and doing something like this for such a great cause. Frankly, I didn’t know that either of these things (the Drive a Tank place or Warrior Rising) existed before reading this story, but frankly, they both sound pretty great to me.