Sports fans will have noticed by now that sports coverage is not our thing here at redbankgreen. There’s way too much of it for this little operation to cover, and frankly, other topics interest us far more.
But every once in a while, we duck into the arena when an event or person rises above the routine.
In this case, we’d like to direct the attention of high school football fans — and anyone with an interest in Red Bank Catholic — to ESPN.com. The sports news site has posted a fairly lengthy and highly laudatory profile of former RBC running back Donald Brown II, who’s now entering his sophomore year at the University of Connecticut.
While Ray Rice of Rutgers and Steve Slaton of West Virginia got more attention, Brown “quietly matched his better-known counterparts yard-for-yard down the stretch last season,” ESPN says.
Brown, who lives in Atlantic Highlands, didn’t get the job of starting running back until the eighth game of his freshman season, yet still racked up 199 yards in that game — against Rutgers — and his 673 yards in five starts were enough to earn him comparisons to the leaders of the Big East. (See his season stats here.)
The story says that Brown was RBC’s “first Division I-A recruit in 20 years. He led the team to a parochial title in his senior year, rushing for 2,032 yards and 27 touchdowns, including a 27-yard touchdown run on his final play.”
ESPN quotes Brown’s coach at RBC, Frank Edgerly, on Brown’s fine character, and includes an anecdote about Brown going to visit RBC alum Frank Maloney (’54) after every game. Maloney was dying of cancer and has since passed away, the story says.
“Donald made it a point, after every game, to seek Frank out and spend time with him, and the best thing about it is, no one told him to,” Edgerly said. “The best way I can phrase it for you: He gets it. He understands there are people looking up to him.”
