the ultimate team player...... right here with me....

i cried for HIM that day...

not SAD tears, happy tears....

i cried for his pain...

knowing full well he gave it 100%

YES, they lost...28-6

but i got to see the other side...

his heart.. and what's inside deep of his heart...

i saw my nephew... my godson...

being taken to a place that only he could get to in his life...

he made it happen...

YES, i watched him grow over the years...from baby, to boy.....

and now to a man.... and i have NEVER in all my life EVER be so PROUD of an individual...

Corey... you continue to take my breath away...at every step you take... at everything you do and all that you are capable of...

after you read this.... you will know a winner... you can tell by his smile....

i will always LOVE you more than you will ever know!


New Britain -- It's no more than a 20- foot walk from the home sideline to the locker room door at Arute Field, a few seconds at most. But it was interminable late Saturday afternoon for about 35 Windham High School players, who got a lesson in bigger, stronger and faster from Hillhouse, the most deserving new Class M state champion.
On they trudged toward the locker room, somber and disappointed, even though a few hundred of their fans had remained to provide a final ovation for the season of their lives. Right there in front, leading the Windham players off the field for the last time in 2006 was Corey Brennan, the senior lineman.
Corey Brennan was right where he should have been, leading them. There was nobody more responsible for the Whips' 11-win season than Brennan, whose selflessness from Day One was the team's heartbeat.
“In my 31 years coaching,” Windham coach Brian Crudden said, “Corey Brennan is the ultimate team player.”
Crudden is entirely comfortable speaking in such superlatives, even though coaches are more reluctant than ever to do so. See, complimenting Player A these days is often perceived as a slight to Player B, or at least to Player B's parents. That's what makes Brennan's story so noteworthy.
This was supposed to be Brennan's season as the starting quarterback. He's listed that way in the season previews. It was his chance to be among the most celebrated students in the school, the quarterback, the kid who owns Friday night.
Now imagine your coach informing you that for the good of the team, you need to be a lineman instead, going from celebrity to anonymity faster than the football Giants can blow a lead.
Corey Brennan not only did it, but he excelled at it. He played defensive tackle, too.
“I might be thought of as crazy for saying this, but to me, Corey was too valuable as an offensive/ defensive lineman to be a quarterback,” Crudden said. “I knew, with the type of person he is, that I could ask him to go back to the line (Brennan was an All-ECC honorable-mention lineman as a sophomore). This probably should have been his turn. But if he's the quarterback, we're probably not as good.”
Much as we'd all like to believe that high school football programs are dictatorships, coaches understand that if they make the wrong choice at a marquee position, the results range from unproductive on the field to mutiny off it. It sure does help to have a young man who, for lack of a better term, gets it.
“To me, it's all about the team,” Brennan said. “I really thought I could contribute more as a lineman. We're more or less a running team and I could help more by blocking.”
It's here you begin to wonder whether the kid's for real. In this era of self-indulgence, Corey Brennan stepped aside for a sophomore, because that's what the team needed. Sort of makes you want to belt out a “glory, glory hallelujah.”
“Hey, being a quarterback is the dream,” Brennan said. “But I knew the team we had coming back. I thought we could win the state championship. I'd rather be a lineman on a team that can win a state championship than the quarterback of a .500 team.”
Brennan was a freshman quarterback for the Whips. But he's also played outside linebacker, inside linebacker and defensive tackle. This season, he huffed and puffed his way through games blocking for Kyle Brueckner, Jon Torres and Addison Fleming, among others, while he watched as Spencer Beaudreault emerged as a very promising quarterback.
“Bottom line,” Crudden said, “if Corey isn't as unselfish, we're not as good as a team. We'd have a hole in the offense.”
Brennan's final game as a high school football player didn't go as planned. What had been perhaps the best season in the history of the program, with the Whips cutting a swath through the Eastern Connecticut Conference, finished with a team Windham might not have beaten in 10 tries.
No shame there.
But it was worth noting that Windham made it all the way to the culmination game in Class M by dressing a few more than 30 players. Rarely, if ever, during the season did Windham's lack of depth make casual conversation.
So how does a team make the state championship game with 30 players? Now there's one we can answer: when the team has a Corey Brennan on it. A player who can see beyond his own self-interest for the good of his teammates.
A state championship would have been the more appropriate ending. But when a man with Crudden's sophistication calls you the “ultimate team player,” you leave the program with words that will guide you long after the shine wears off the championship trophy.

Don't think there are many 17 year olds that can do this......