By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
The first NFL training camp for Western Alamance alum Joshua Karty begins next week.
Karty will wear uniform No. 43 with his first professional team.
In May, numerous outlets, including Spotrac.com, reported that the Rams signed Karty to a four-year, $4.15 million contract with a $138,388 signing bonus.
Following a standout college career for Stanford, Karty was a sixth-round draft selection, going 209th overall in this spring’s NFL Draft.
After a highly successful high school career with Western, Karty, 22, spent four seasons at Stanford.
This next step as he embarks on his NFL career is bound to add to his array of experiences since high school.
“Around here and at Western, everything is pretty homogeneous. The same type of people in general,” Karty said during the offseason. “… In the Bay Area, especially at Stanford, it’s much more of a mixing pot. There’s many more walks of life, different people. Just a bunch of experiences that just would not have happened in Burlington, North Carolina.
“I do think I developed a different perspective on life just by meeting people from all different kinds of places.”
Rams players report to training camp Tuesday at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. The team’s first preseason game comes August 11 against the visiting Dallas Cowboys.
The Rams open the regular season September 8 at Detroit in the weekly Sunday Night Football game to air on NBC. That’s a rematch of a playoff game from last season.
