By John Breech/STAFF

When kids wake up on Saturday mornings, the first thing they usually do is watch cartoons or play video games. Yesterday, a group of 150 lucky kids woke and did something a little more exciting with their Saturday morning: they spent three hours catching passes from Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan.

Ryan was at Centennial High School yesterday to put on the Matt Ryan Football Clinic.

“The main theme of this clinic is quarterback and wide receiver skills, that’s probably what I know the most about,” says the Falcon QB who is headed into his third year in the NFL. “We also work on the fundamentals like getting into the proper stance and how to hold the football the correctly.”

As far as professional athletes camps go, Ryan’s camp has one of the more unique setups in the country. While most camps cost well over $150 for three hours of instruction (Phillip Rivers of the Chargers and Reggie Bush of the Saints both charge this price), Ryan’s camp is free to all children who attend.

The camp can accommodate up to 150 kids and those spots are filled up by ‘scholarships.’ The Boys and Girls Club of Greater Atlanta sends 100 kids through this ‘scholarship’ program. The other 50 spots are given to children who are apart of similar organizations.

Why did Ryan start holding a camp? “After my rookie season, I thought putting on a camp would be something fun to do,” says the 2008 Offensive Rookie of the Year. “The [camp] has been a blast. The kids enjoy it and I’m enjoy it.”

Most kids at the camp would probably agree that Ryan puts the fun in fundamentals. The 25-year-old gave one-on-one instruction to several campers and he even signed a football card for all 150 kids in attendance.

After almost three hours of instruction from Ryan and 15 local coaches, two campers were randomly chosen to take part in a post-camp contest. The campers had the opportunity to win a signed Matt Ryan Falcons jersey if they could do one thing: throw a football through a tire from eight yards away. Both campers went home with jerseys.

Ryan’s camp was held one day after the Falcons ended their OTA session. Ryan had nothing but positive things to say about his teammates, “OTA’s went really well,” the Falcons quarterback says. “Our team looks good, guys are confident. I think we were really productive this spring and we’ve gotten a lot better. We cleaned up some things that we needed too.”

With the NFL being almost a year round job, Ryan is looking forward to his only time off: the time between the last OTA (held June 18) and the first day of training camp (July 29). “Its nice to have an opportunity to rest a little bit before training camp starts,” the avid golfer says. “I’m going to stay away from football for a little bit, clear the head, keep the body in shape and be ready to go July 29.”