It was the state championship game for the 2017-2018 season, in which now senior Mannie Brandon was the linebacker for his 11U travel football team, the Indy Broncos. In the middle of the game, after throwing three picks, his team’s quarterback quit and walked off the field.
The coaches needed a quarterback and Brandon stepped up to take on the role. He then played in that spot for the rest of the game.
As little kids, many dream of making it to the next level for their sport, whether it’s in college or even on the professional stage.
For Brandon, this was the moment that he realized that football was his future and what he wanted to do.
“It went from just something that I wanted to do everyday to a tool that I could use to shape my future,” Brandon said. “It went from just being a sport I played in the backyard with my siblings to literally the reason I’m going to college for free.”
Brandon began his high school football career at Perry Meridian High, where he spent his first two seasons before transferring out because the school made him a very unhappy person.
He then moved to Beech Grove for his junior season and enjoyed his time there, but he knew he wasn’t going to get the playing time he wanted there.
Seeing an opportunity to play, he came to SHS during his fourth and final season to become a new team player for the Cards.
Brandon was put into the starting quarterback role, which has been a position of inconsistency because it has been filled by three different players in the past five seasons. Throughout this season, he has helped lead the Cards as one of the team captains.
Brandon is taking on this role with a sense of meaning and importance, realizing the responsibility of being a leader has an impact on him and his team.
“This is a team that hasn’t had much success, and we’re not having a lot of success currently,” Brandon said. “But it’s a big role, right on the turning point of being really good … and being that guy that’s supposed to lead us to it, it’s definitely a big responsibility.”
Though he is a new addition to the team and SHS itself, he has become a leader who will help out his teammates on and off the field as well as find a way to help the underclassmen in any way he can.
“He helps me out a lot with school and he helps me out with football,” sophomore quarterback Mason Owens said. “I got a lot better from learning from Mannie.”
Head varsity football coach Sean Little has not only seen the help Brandon has given to Owens in the first half of the season, but he has also witnessed the impact he has on his underclassmen teammates.
“He’s always kind of chipper and excited and that’s contagious, and so the more of that we have the better it is and the better our program becomes,” Little said.
As for Brandon’s future in the world of college, he has verbally committed to an NAIA school. Although his future in football is uncertain, receiving a call from a college for the first time really showed him that his dream was becoming a reality.
“I was really excited,” Brandon said. “It was a little bit emotional … it was a good thing cause it was hard work that paid off.”
