Is Everyone Ready for SUPERBOWL!
That’s Brian on the right in blue & white. It was 1991at a practice for the “Snowline Diamondbacks”, he was 13. In Glendale the year before he was a tight for the “Glendale Bears”. This was his last year to play junior football. When he went to high school he played one year for the “Serrano Diamondbacks”. I don’t know why he didn’t continue to play throughout H.S. Maybe he’ll comment and tell us all his remembrances of playing football.
We really enjoyed going to the practices and games. The pizza parties after the games with all the kids and some of the families were great fun too. That is where we learned that Keri was an excellent arm wrestler. She put down most of Brian’s team mates…not sure if they weren’t letting her win just to get close to her or not. She is Brian’s biggest fan then and now, and showed her spirit as a “Glendale Bears” cheerleader.
This was taken on the Hoover High School football field in 1990, she was 13. Hoover High is where her grandmother, Doris went in 1946-47. She only went there for one year and then her family moved to Adams Hill, and then she went to Glendale High, where she graduated in 1949. Her younger sister Emily went there too…as did some famous alumni like Marion Robert Morrison, we all know him as the “Duke” John Wayne.
Keri and Brian were students at Eleanor J Toll Jr. High School in 1990. Their grandmother Doris went there also and graduated in 1946. We really loved the time we lived in Glendale, but sadly housing prices and the influx of gangs Armenian, Mexican and Asian, made us look to the High Desert to buy. Which reminds me that yesterday I saw the first graffiti in Phelan. 
Leave it to your mom to pick the one sore subject. First of all, im the third kid on the left of that front kid in blue and white. Even at 30 years old quiting is still a huge regret of mine. I believe there are a couple of contributing factors, i was the only kid who had to drive himself to practice (on an enduro no less, 10 miles through the mountains), the kids that i had to try out against had been playing football together since very young (i think if i was able to play with the glendale bears team that i started with it might have made a difference)and lastly i went straight from peewee to JV high school football when all the kids i was playing with went to junior football first (i think junior is the right word either way its above peewee and below JV).
I find it kind of amusing and cleansing as im writing this that after all these years i still retain so much animosity towards this subject. All in all my years playing football were some of the best of my life.
In hindsight it may have been a very important life lesson that has carried through to today. Since that time i have married the most beautiful and intelligent woman in the world (if you know her you know what im talking about), i have two beautiful daughters, i am a very sucessful business owner, i served my country (one of the biggest and hardest groups i have ever tried out for, also where i continued to play football for my Co.)
In closing i think the most important lesson i took away from playing football when i was a kid is that no matter where you go or how old you become in life you will always meet adversity with groups of people who have been doing the same thing together long before you came there, making it and uneven playing field. Its what you do with your skills, motivation, determination and intestinal fortitude that will set you apart not how long you have been with the group.
I am still fighting the good fight today through my business, constantly breaking down the barriers that have been put up by the ‘groups’ of business men here in SC. Thus far it has served me well and i would not trade that kind of lesson for anything in the world.
Love, Brian
(not sure if that was the kind of intraspective comment you were looking for mom, but those are my memories from that time)