Chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill brightens kids’ day at Boys & Girls Club in Kansas City
Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill, the self-dubbed fastest man in the NFL (and quite possibly accurately so), has grown accustomed to people challenging him to a race.
But on Thursday, the summon was a bit unique.
His challenger? A 6-year-old kid.
Hill spent Thursday afternoon at the Boys & Girls Club in Kansas City, handing out backpacks and conversing with grade-schoolers. It took only three greetings before 6-year-old Levi Franklin stepped up to the table.
“I’m fast,” Levi said, before adding with a straight face: “Faster than you are.”
“No way you faster than me, man,” Hill replied.
“Yeah, I am,” Levi said, doubling down as he walked off. “Faster than you.”
Hill shook his head and laughed as Levi, wearing Tyreek Hill socks, turned his back and left.
And so it went for some 40 minutes.
“That’s what makes my job fun,” Hill said. “When I get a chance to just come in and have fun with these kids and just see their smiles and just uplift them, it’s amazing.”
Hill was scheduled to hand out 200 red and black Adidas backpacks. After he arrived, he tore the plastic off several of them, pulled out a Sharpie and signed them. He requested a chair and table to allow the kids to come through in a line, one by one, receiving signatures on their new items.
They remained socially distanced as they waited. Each visitor had his or her temperature checked as they entered, new protocols at the club during the COVID-19 pandemic.
And then they patiently waited.
The conversations centered on his speed. “Are you faster than Usain Bolt?”
His video games. “Are you good at Fortnite?”
His position. “Can you play offensive line?”
Hill seem plenty comfortable engaging each of them. (Yes, he’s faster than Bolt today. Yes, he plays Fortnite. And he’ll play wherever you want him to play.)
“This means the world to our kids to see a real-life hero,” said Dred Scott, president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City. “Somebody that looks like them; somebody that moves like him; somebody that they’ve seen on televisions playing at the highest level.
“Of course our kids aspire to do great things. That’s one of the things we try do here at the clubs — exposing them to all of what is possible. So to see someone at the highest level, (it) just brings home to them that they can do it, too.”