Chants of "Do it! Do it!" echo around the small gymnasium at Theodore Potter School 74 in Indianapolis, with a couple hundred elementary school students yelling at the top of their lungs. It's loud and rambunctious, a clear deviation from a typical Tuesday morning at school. But the students have a good reason to be so excited.
After all, it's not every day you get to see an NFL player snap a football to knock a bucket off your favorite NFL mascot's head.
The best part of the moment, though, wasn't Luke Rhodes showing off his impressive skills or Blue avoiding getting hit in the face with a football. It was Colts punter Rigoberto Sanchez narrating the entire thing in Spanish, and all of the students understood what was happening.
Because as cool as it was for the students to see NFL players show up at their school, it was even cooler to hear one of them speak only in Spanish the entire time he was there.
Theodore Potter School 74 is a dual language school, and the only school in IPS (Indianapolis Public Schools) that offers a two-way dual language immersion program all the way from kindergarten to sixth grade. Many students come from Hispanic backgrounds and are more proficient and comfortable speaking in Spanish than in English.
So, when Blue showed up with Rhodes and Sanchez for one of his Read Across America school shows, the performance wasn't in English like it usually was. Blue's book, Blue's Road Trip Through Indiana, had been translated into Spanish and Sanchez, a fluent Spanish speaker whose parents were born in Mexico, was the one to share it with the students.
"It was such a blessing to be able to do that," Sanchez said. "With my background, my parents, and then me being able to speak fluent Spanish, I think that gives the kids a really awesome experience because I was in their shoes at one point.
"It's a true honor. Our platform is amazing in so many ways, but I think that's one of the biggest things I take pride in whenever I get the chance to be able to give back to the kids and the community. The impact you make on kids, and just people, it's amazing."
The show was a part of the Colts' Community Tuesday event to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (which spans from September 15 to October 15), after which they also put on a book fair with both Spanish and English books and a football camp for the students. The show was a new addition, though. While the Colts had hosted book fairs and football camps in the past to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, it always felt like there was something missing.
"It was good, there was nothing wrong with it...we just kind of felt like what we were doing was just like a box check," Colts Community Impact Manager Claire Kirby explained. "We wanted to find a way to be a little more intentional, and if we're going to celebrate Hispanic Heritage, we just felt like we needed to do that in more of an impactful way."
In the spring of 2024, that opportunity all but landed right in front of her.
Kirby and Colts Director of Community Impact Ande Sadtler were both in attendance at one of Blue's Read Across America shows when a teacher, upon hearing a Colts player reading Blue's book in English, remarked, "It would be great if they could do it in Spanish. Half the kids aren't going to understand what they're saying."
From there, pieces started falling into a place.
A group was assembled to translate the book, bringing in everyone from Colts employees to family members to the former executive director of the Indiana Latino Expo to help bring the book to life. They ensured that the book was translated in a way that would flow well and make sense to children, and wasn't just a copy-paste version from Google Translate.
"In English, the book rhymes and it goes in alphabetical order, so the exact translation doesn't necessarily meet that cadence of a children's book," Kirby said. "So just making sure that if the exact translation of the word 'jump' made less sense than the word 'hop.' We were making those word choices that kids would still understand, but it would read more like a children's book."
They also made sure to put the English and Spanish versions of all the locations Blue visits to help readers make the connections between the two languages as they read, and facilitate even more learning.
In September, the book was published and sent to the Colts. The job wasn't done, though.
Blue's book readings – full of props and audience interaction – require a full team of people to help execute, even in English. So, by reading in Spanish, there needed to be a way for Blue and any other Colts players (in this case, Rhodes) who didn't speak Spanish to know what was going on and keep up with the performance.
It was determined the best course of action would be for Blue and Rhodes to each have earpieces in, so someone behind the scenes could communicate with them and ensure they understood what Sanchez was saying at all times as he interacted with the students. Essentially, it was like a three-way phone call translating Sanchez's Spanish to English.
It worked like a charm. Sanchez didn't speak a word of English, and the show was fully successful in engaging the students and including them in a way they hadn't experienced before. In fact, the only people to speak in English were the students, yelling and encouraging Blue, Rhodes and Sanchez to do things like shoot basketball trick shots and put funny accessories on Sanchez as he was reading.
"It was that moment, when they started yelling 'Do it,' where it was like, not only are they hearing it in Spanish, they're connecting the visual and then they're even speaking in English," Sadtler recalled. "So it's the full circle of English, Spanish, audio, visual, physical interaction. That was just really, really cool to see."
"I think for (young) kids to be in a school where they're teaching in two languages and they might not understand one language, they might already feel like they're trying to play catch-up or maybe they're a little bit behind," Kirby said. "To have a professional football player, and especially Rigo, come in and speak their language and meet them where they are, I think must have been really special for them."
In seeing how special the experience was for the students at Theodore Potter, the goal now is to continue Blue's Spanish reading show and keep spreading inclusivity and acceptance. The Spanish translation of the book also opens the door to bring in new language translations at some point in the future.
"This is kind of what I like to call our pilot," Sadtler said. "And I think as not only our international presence grows and we potentially expand there...I think this is something that could be a really nice integration with our international efforts."
Even just within in the United States, there's an opportunity for Blue and his team to expand their reach with the Spanish translation.
And the show wasn't just meaningful for the children, either. For Rhodes and Sanchez, taking the time to go visit and interact with the kids was a wholly rewarding experience, and a bit of a reprieve from the stress of their football responsibilities.
"That's the future of our generation," Rhodes said. "To be able to help shape a few of them – or hopefully all of them – is crucial for our community. So we need to show love and examples for them. And, it's just fun to work with children. They're so fun and have no filter, they'll tell you how they feel which is different than being around adults all the time."
"It was just exciting to see a smile on their face, knowing you brought that to them," Sanchez said. "And it just gives you motivation to keep going."
