Brad made the TIFI all-star team his senior year as well. It was a lot of fun. Since we played in the Super Bowl us
and the sharks coaches got to coach both teams. They were divided up into a blue team and a red team. We both had 25 players I think and you had to designate who got to play defense and who played offense. We practiced for one week with these kids and then played a game the following saturday. It was a great experience. Since we were a top team we got to have more kids on the team. I think we had 5 or 6. Malcolm, Devin, Brad, Garrett, Dylan, and Jake. The other teams had between 2-4 from each team. It was a great time for Brad he got to meet and practice with good athletes. It was fun for me also. I had never done anything like that so getting to work with all those good athletic kids was fun. We split them up and we put brad on defense. I could see even though he is tall he needs to fill out more and get stronger. There were some big mature boys on that team but I know some of them have matured out and will get no bigger. But they were athletic and listened to coaching and that made it fun for me. I enlisted my buddy Wayne Shultz he has coached TIFI for about 20 years. he does a great job and has coached all-star games before. So I got him to help. He really loved it and thanked me afterward so it was great he got to help.
The day of the game we all warmed up and I could tell the boys were a little nervous. Everything started smooth and the game was a defensive struggle. I had a great time calling defense. I hadn’t called a game since I got out of high school coaching. The kids responded well and I fell right back into my JV thursday night adjustments. It was cool to see kids this age responding and being able to check out of a few things. We shut the other team down and scored a couple. We fumbled and they ended up scoring to tie the game. We went into overtime and had to stop them on the goalline to keep them from scoring. The kids were so excited. Then we went out and were stuck on the goalline as well. I called time out and we overloaded one side and gave the ball to the big kid from Dickinson. he scored and the sidelines went crazy. You would have thought we won the Super Bowl. Brad had made some good friends and all the kids celebrated. It was a great feeling and a great end to his TIFI career. He got a sack during the game. We took pictures and the paper even wrote an article about the game.
I 
cannot express how proud I am of Brad after the last four years of football. That all-star game really was icing on the cake I hope he takes these memories and builds on them with new relationships with kids from other schools and remembers the time we spent together. He is the best football player I know, and especially the best tight end. Even though I may be biased!!!!!!!!
Ya’ll Be Safe Out There!!
check out the newspaper articles by clicking these links below
