CBS News and Scott Pe
lley not long ago did a heartwarming, perky and positive story about a mentally challenged high school football player who was deliberately given a chance to score a touchdown, and he succeeded.
The story took place in Olivet, Mich., during an Olivet High School football game. A running back deliberately went down at the one-yard line, short of a touchdown, to set up the special ed student’s TD.
I recalled a story from 33 years ago that was even more startling.
Albion High School, which no longer plays football and doesn’t even have a high school any more, was on its way to its third 8-1 season overall in four years. The Wildcats’ last game of the 1983 season was at Ypsilanti Willow Run for a non-league encounter.
I did not attend the game because it was just too far for me to travel, but I later learned Albion had prevailed, but only by a 16-14 score.
I spoke with head coach Mike Sequite the next day and he told me a story I couldn’t believe at first, but later it was verified in the Battle Creek Enquirer and News.
Albion tied the game at 14-all in the fourth quarter on a touchdown and not having a quality placekicker, decided to go for a two-point conversion for the win. Even more astonishing is that Sequite chose to have special ed kid Sid Coleman carry the football into the end zone. Sid was so well liked by his teammates that they moved mountains (figuratively) to give Sid enough daylight to go the three necessary yards for the two points.
Sequite swore up and down that it was true story and the team had been working on a play for Sid all week to give him the thrill of scoring.
The Battle Creek Enquirer did not make a big deal about it. In fact, all it did was publish the line score, and sure enough, it reported that the PAT had been scored by Sid Coleman.
The story got even more special several years later.
Sid’s younger broth
er, Millard Coleman Jr. was elevated to the varsity as the freshman quarterback in 1986. His father, Millard Sr., in the next year took a job as clerk for the City of Farmington and Mill “The Thrill” was the heralded sophomore QB of the Farmington Hills varsity.
MaxPreps rated him among the greatest all-time Michigan prep football players, saying, “There was a reason Coleman was called ‘The Thrill,’ and high school football fans will never forget the electricity that he generated. A winner who could beat you with his arm or his legs, Coleman led Harrison in three Class B state title games, of which he won two. He finished his career with 7,464 passing yards, but it was his ‘big-play’ ability on the high school level that has not been seen since.”
Mill then got himself an athletic scholarship to play at Michigan State University. He did not win the starting job as quarterback for the Spartans, but George Perles smartly put him at wide receiver, where he was all-Big 10. He even got an offer to try out for the Detroit Lions and caught a TD pass in an exhibition game.
So “The Thrill,” a genuinely good kid from a good family I knew, really made a name for himself in the athletic arena, but I will never forget the saga of a teen-age mentally challenged youth scoring that game-winning PAT because his teammates loved him enough to achieve it.
PHOTO: Mill Coleman today, the head of a football training business. He looks a lot like his dad.
