An ice cream truck at practice? Just another day with Pete Carroll’s consistent Seahawks
Tyler Lockett ordered, then grinned like he’d just caught another touchdown pass.
Kenneth Walker walked away with a Sponge Bob Squarepants popsicle—and a gigantic smile.
Jerrick Reed raised both arms and pumped them giddily while he waited in line among teammates for his.
Coach Clint Hurtt got an old-fashioned bomb pop.
Jordyn Brooks wasn’t even done with his first one when he came back out of the Seahawks’ locker room to get another.
No, he said, he’s never been on a football team that’s had this.
“This is great,” the linebacker said, smiling.
“This is heavenly.”
This was Pete Carroll’s latest surprise for his team: Having an ice cream truck at practice Thursday, three days before his Seahawks host the Carolina Panthers.
The bright-yellow truck with “FUNTASTIC” writing in playful letters on the front and children’s music playing from its speakers was parked on the edge of the field, in direct line of the players’ route from practice into the team facility and locker room.
A celebration of the team’s big overtime win at favored Detroit last weekend? A reward for goals met? A belated party for Carroll’s 72nd birthday last week? Someone losing a bet?
Nope. Just another day that ends in “y” with Carroll’s Seahawks.
Win or lose, May, September or January, they have music blaring during practices and in locker rooms.
They have free-throw shooting contests in team meetings, with the theme from “Space Jam” blaring, on the regulation basketball hoop and scoreboard Carroll had installed in the facility’s main auditorium.
They have contests to throw footballs into garbage cans and onto the back roof on the headquarters.
They howl at offensive and defensive linemen trying to kick field goals through the uprights.
They get visitors to practice such as Kendrick Lamar, the late Bill Russell and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Every day. Every month. Every Seahawks season.
“The consistency on approach,” Hurtt, the defensive coordinator who’s been on Carroll’s coaching staff in Seattle since 2017, said about 20 yards away from the ice cream truck Thursday. “Whether we win a game by a lot of points, we lose a tough one, whatever the case may be, there’s a consistency to how things are done and how you bring yourself to work every day.
“Obviously, it’s a highly competitive environment. And we know how competitive this league is. But the thing that Pete brings to it everyday is, ‘Listen, we have to be able to move past it...it’s about flushing and moving on.”
Hurtt said the players appreciate that consistency. Consistent fun. Consistent music. Consistent messaging: “All in” and “Always Compete.”
Especially players who arrive from other NFL teams.
“You listen to guys talk when they play for other teams and their experiences, when they drop a game it’s like a funeral,” Hurtt said. “The game can’t be like that, because then things linger, and that’s when you hear about ‘Well, there was a hangover effect from the previous contest.’ That’s not what you want to have.
“Our players appreciate that. Us as coaches appreciate that. ...
“It’s why he’s been consistently winning for as long as he has.”
This story was originally published September 21, 2023 at 4:35 PM.
