ODEBOLT, Iowa (AP) — In the farm town where Cooper DeJean drew up football plays in elementary school and taught classmates to run them at recess, residents plan a huge party to watch the town’s native son in the Super Bowl.
The Philadelphia Eagles defensive back has lifted spirits in Odebolt, Iowa, a town of 920 people once known as the Popcorn Capital of the World.
Residents say he’s also inspired children in the four towns that make up the local school district in this remote region of Western Iowa, where he played quarterback in stadiums carved out of cornfields.
“People want to root for him because of how he carries himself,” said Larry Allen, who was DeJean’s high school football coach.
“Cooper is so unassuming, and he doesn’t talk about himself, he doesn’t showcase himself. He’s a very humble young man, and he did most of his talking on the field of play.”
On Sunday fans will gather in the Odebolt Community Building for a Super Bowl watch party they’re calling the “Cooper Bowl.” Many plan to wear special Eagles green T-shirts printed up for the occasion that feature DeJean’s No. 33. It's also a birthday party for DeJean, who turns 22 on Super Bowl Sunday.
“The whole town is just ecstatic,” said Cory Duff, who owns The Bolt Drive-In, a local restaurant.
“I would say it has brought a renewed energy back to the community,” he said. “It has definitely uplifted everybody around here.”
Duff said he’s a die-hard Denver Broncos fan “and I even bought his jersey.”
“Everybody around here has their own team, but whenever the Eagles are playing, everyone’s watching,” Duff said.
DeJean’s father, Jason, said he was touched by a video that school employees made featuring dozens of children and teachers wishing his son the best in the Super Bowl.
“They all got on the playground and spelled out ‘Cooper,’” Jason DeJean said. The nearly 5-minute video is infused with cuteness, with one scene showing elementary school students making hand motions to imitate birds as they sing the team's fight song, “Fly Eagles Fly.”
Ever since DeJean began flying around the football field at the University of Iowa, “the support around this community has been just crazy,” Jason DeJean said. “Now you see Eagle jerseys and 33 and all that stuff. It’s great to see, and you couldn’t ask for any more support than what this community gives.”
After winning back-to-back state football championships in his final two years of high school, DeJean went on to a stellar career at the University of Iowa where he was named an All-American. In the 2024 NFL draft, the Eagles selected him in the second round.
Only a handful of athletes from the small towns of the Western Valley Activities Conference go on to compete in any sport at a major university, making DeJean’s path from Odebolt to the Iowa Hawkeyes and now the Philadelphia Eagles one of the most improbable ever taken in this part of Western Iowa.
“It’s not very often a kid from a town of less than 1,000 people gets to go to the Super Bowl,” Duff said.
DeJean's intense work ethic is a common thread that ties him to legendary athletes from other parts of the state such as former Iowa Hawkeye and WNBA star Caitlin Clark, from West Des Moines, and Pro Football Hall of Famer Kurt Warner, from Burlington, who played in high school in Cedar Rapids.
DeJean's path to the Super Bowl has cast a spotlight on Odebolt, but it was the dirt he played on that helped put the town and its surrounding farmland on the map.
A two-lane highway winds down from the Loess Hills on Iowa’s western edge, past giant wind turbines and fields of corn and soybeans to get to Odebolt.
A 20-mile (32-kilometer) stretch of the road, Iowa Highway 175, connects the towns that send students to DeJean’s old high school: Battle Creek, Ida Grove, Odebolt and blink-and-you-miss-it Arthur, population 222.
In this wide-open area, farm animals outnumber people by a wide margin. The county that includes Odebolt is home to about 46,000 cattle — more than four times the human population of 9,800, according to numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The rich, black soil surrounding Odebolt was seen as ideal for growing popcorn and led Chicago's Cracker Jack Co. to choose it to supply the popcorn for its Cracker Jack snacks.
Cracker Jack Co. Executive Vice President E.R. Shields praised Odebolt’s early pioneers, who created the town from wilderness. And their descendants were “shining examples of strength, fortitude and foresight that has made your community ‘The Popcorn Center of the World,’” he wrote in 1938 in the Odebolt Chronicle.
Residents who know DeJean say they see that same strength and fortitude in him. They speak highly of his work ethic in sports, but also his personality traits in life.
“The kid is insanely humble, and he’s not going to forget where he comes from,” Duff said.
FILE - Iowa defensive back Cooper DeJean (3) in action against Rutgers during an NCAA college football game, Sept. 24, 2022, in Piscataway, N.J. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger, File)
FILE - Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Cooper DeJean (33) takes down Washington Commanders wide receiver Jamison Crowder (80) during the NFC Championship NFL football game, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Daniel Kucin Jr., File)
FILE - Philadelphia Eagles' Cooper DeJean walks off the field before the NFC Championship NFL football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Washington Commanders, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The United States said an agreement has been reached to ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea as it wrapped up three days of talks Tuesday with Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Saudi Arabia on prospective steps toward peace.
U.S. experts met separately with Ukrainian and Russian representatives in Riyadh, and the White House issued separate joint statements about the talks with Ukraine and Russia. It said the sides have “agreed to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea.”
Details of the prospective deal are yet to be released, but it appears to mark a revival of a 2022 agreement to ensure safe transit via Ukraine's Black Sea ports that was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey and was halted by Russia the following year. Russia had said the agreement failed to ensure safety of its Black Sea exports.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in televised comments Tuesday that Moscow is open to the revival of the agreement but warned that Russian interests must be protected.
In an apparent reference to the Russian demands, the White House statement on the talks with Russia noted that the U.S. “will help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions.”
The White House statement also mentioned that the parties agreed to develop measures for implementing an agreement reached in President Donald Trump’s calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ban strikes against energy facilities in Russia and Ukraine.
After the Trump-Putin call last week, the White House said the partial ceasefire would include ending attacks on “energy and infrastructure,” while the Kremlin declared that the agreement referred more narrowly to “energy infrastructure."
Meanwhile, a Kremlin official said Tuesday that the talks between U.S. and Russian officials in Riyadh the previous day would likely lead to further contacts between Washington and Moscow, but that no concrete plans have yet been made.
The three days of meetings — which did not include direct Russian-Ukrainian negotiations — are part of an attempt to hammer out details on a partial pause in the 3-year-old war in Ukraine. It has been a struggle to reach even a limited, 30-day ceasefire — which Moscow and Kyiv agreed to in principle last week -- with both sides continuing to attack each other with drones and missiles.
On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the the outcome of the U.S-Russia talks in Riyadh “has been reported in the capitals” and was currently being “analyzed” by Moscow and Washington, but that the Kremlin has no plans to release further details of what was discussed to the public.
“We’re talking about technical negotiations, negotiations with immersion in details," Peskov said, adding that while there are currently no plans for Trump and Putin to speak, such a conversation could be quickly organized if the need arises.
“There is an understanding that the contacts will continue, but there is nothing concrete at the moment,” Peskov said. He added that that there are no plans to hold a three-way meeting between Russia, the U.S. and Ukraine.
Senior Russian lawmaker Grigory Karasin, who took part in the Russia-U.S. talks in Riyadh on Monday, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti that the conversation was “very interesting, difficult, but quite constructive.”
“We were at it all day from morning until late at night,” Karasin was quoted by the agency as saying on Tuesday.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that Ukraine had "continued deliberate drone strikes against Russia’s civilian energy facilities.”
One Ukrainian drone attack on Monday knocked down a high-voltage power line linking the Rostov nuclear power plant with the city of Tikhoretsk in the southern Krasnodar region, the ministry said, adding that another drone strike had occurred on the Svatovo gas distribution station in the Russia-occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk.
"Zelenskyy confirms his inability to observe agreements and makes it impossible for outside guarantors of any potential agreements to control him,” the ministry said.
In Ukraine, the number of people injured Monday in a Russian missile strike on the center of the city of Sumy rose to 101 people including 23 children, according to the Sumy regional administration.
The strike on Sumy, across the border from Russia’s Kursk region which was partially occupied by Ukraine since August, hit residential buildings and a school, which had to be evacuated due to the attack.
Meanwhile, Russian forces launched one ballistic missile and 139 long-range strike and decoy drones into Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force. Those attacks affected seven regions of Ukraine and injured multiple people.
Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, a paramedic evacuates an elderly resident whose house was hit by Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire following a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, a psychologist works with residents of houses which were hit by a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire following a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
