Colts players team with Reich family to combat child exploitation
Apr. 24—INDIANAPOLIS — Frank Reich's first public venture of 2022 was a rousing success.
The Indianapolis Colts head coach and his wife, Linda, hosted the Courage to Compete bowling event Saturday at Woodland Bowl. The inaugural in-person event for the family's kNot Today Foundation raised more than $220,000 in the fight to eradicate child sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking.
"Really, we're focusing on education," Linda Reich said. "We find children go to two places all the time. They go to school, and they go to their health care provider. And we really want to have prevention education in every school in Indiana to hear this is not normalized. This is not OK, what's happening to them.
"And when children hear that, then they can start to heal."
Founded in 2019, kNot Today "is focused on generating awareness, initiating prevention strategies and assisting in the development of innovative healing programs to care for children who have experienced sexual trauma," according to its mission statement.
Linda Reich is spearheading the movement which was inspired by the family's travels across the country during her husband's coaching career. Once they realized the breadth and scope of the problem, the Reichs felt compelled to act.
kNot Today joined the Alliance Against Human Trafficking & Exploitation in 2021 and was at the forefront of raising awareness during Super Bowl week in Los Angeles in February.
All-Pro defensive tackle DeForest Buckner has been an outspoken advocate for kNot Today since arriving in Indianapolis in a 2020 trade with the San Francisco 49ers, and he served as one of three team captains during Saturday's bowling event.
"Just thinking about this issue — not a lot of people really putting it on the forefront as a main issue in our society," Buckner said. "Just being able to see Frank and Linda attack this at the forefront and just having my own children — my wife and I were just thinking what if this happened to our children? How devastated would we be? And the process of finding them help and going through that rehab, it takes some process with that.
"I just thought just everything that Frank and Linda stand up for with kNot Today was just a no-brainer for us to tag along and partner with them and spread the awareness, mainly just because just having those conversations — it's not a popular topic to talk about. Obviously, it's uncomfortable for a lot of people.
"Nobody wants to be uncomfortable talking about certain situations, and this issue is bigger. So that's why we were so behind it 100%."
Buckner was joined Saturday by All-Pro teammates Quenton Nelson and Jonathan Taylor for the sold-out bowling tournament.
After the first week of offseason work for the 2022 season, it was a chance to build camaraderie while helping to combat a serious problem nationwide.
The trio downplayed their own bowling prowess and shared a lot of laughs with assembled teammates and members of the coaching staff.
But no one lost sight of the true purpose for the evening.
"We're here to build awareness and hopefully prevent some of these terrible things happening in the future," Nelson said. "This is something that needs to stop, needs to be addressed more thoroughly."
