Brennan Framel: Do-It-All 20-Sport Letterman and Valedictorian
Note: CHSAA is interested in finding out about other student-athletes who have earned, or will earn, 17 or more letters during their high school careers. If you know of anyone, past or present, with 17 or more letters during a high school career in Colorado, please email rwhite@chsaa.org.
AURORA – Four years, 20 letters, countless 25-minute drives for some practices, a 4.0 grade-point average and valedictorian honors … and it all came down to this.
Brennan Framel of Kit Carson was getting set to run the 1600 meters at the CHSAA 1A State Track & Field Championships.
“It was the most emotion I had probably felt,” Framel said. “It might have been the only time I’ve been nervous before running a race. I don’t know if I was nervous for the race, or because it was the last high school experience I was going to have – I had already graduated the week before. All I had left was that race.
“When I placed (eighth), it was very joyous. A lot of practice, a lot of time and dedication had gone into it.”
On that day Framel, who also placed eighth in the 3200 earlier in the meet, capped off a remarkable athletic and academic career characterized by its consistency, commitment and drive for competition.
Maybe he wasn’t the best at everything athletically, but he did everything at a consistently solid level while juggling five sports and earning the chance to study aerospace engineering at the University of Colorado this fall.
He has been a true student-athlete.
In 6-man football, he once played all six positions on both offense and defense in a game, while also being the holder on point-after-touchdown kicks and the long snapper on punts — he was all-conference honorable mention. Playing golf for nearby Eads, he was typically the team’s second-best player and earned a couple of top-10 finishes. In basketball, naturally, he did a bit of everything, averaging 5.7 points, 7.2 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.2 steals as a senior. And, in addition to his track & field accomplishments (he qualified for state in the 1600 and 3200 three times each and was sixth in the 3200 as a junior), he played first base and pitched for the nearby Cheyenne Wells baseball team.
“He’s the type of kid who understands that you may not be great at everything, but you should try to be your best at everything,” Kit Carson basketball coach Jason Dechant said. “He wants to be the best he can be at everything he tries and that’s how he ended up being able to letter in all those sports. He’s a perfectionist, and I think that played into his ability to do all five sports at a pretty high level.”
Said Alexis Gekeler, the Kit Carson track coach: “Kids who have had success in other sports, I think it’s because they’ve worked hard in the classroom and that carries into sports. He’s an example of that. He worked hard at everything he did. So he probably finished better than expected (at state), but I also think that if he’d been able to practice every day he could’ve probably done even better.”
Yes, playing five sports in a school year requires some give and take, from coaches, administrators and the athlete – and that’s before the complications of competing for the nearest school that offers the sport you are seeking to play. The golf and football seasons overlap in the fall, and so do track and baseball in the spring.
In the spring, track practice began the final hour of the school day. Framel would start there, then at about 4 p.m., he and other Kit Carson track teammates would drive the 25 minutes to Cheyenne Wells for baseball practice from 4:30 to 6 p.m. When he was younger, the juniors and seniors playing both sports would be the drivers. Once he was old enough, Framel and others switched off driving responsibilities.
“It could get repetitive and tiring, but those are some of my better memories,” Framel said.
He missed a few track meets for baseball games, and a few baseball practices for track meets.
The golf-football double had its challenges, too. He missed a few golf tournaments for football games, and a few others because of injuries suffered playing football. He missed some football practices for golf tournaments. He tried to play golf two or three times a week, typically on weekends and Mondays, typically a lighter practice day for football.
“I was very fortunate that my golf coach had a lot of trust in me, so I did a lot of practicing by myself,” Framel said. “I could text the golf coach and we might meet on the course, or he might text me some things to work on.”
Before he was old enough, Framel would get 25-minute rides to and from golf practice from family – and sometimes from community members.
In every sport, Framel was able to put his brainpower to work.
“He was an extension of the coach on the floor,” said Dechant, the basketball coach. “He knows all the sets, and he can get other people lined up if they’re in the wrong spot – especially with the younger players who we had on the floor at times. Anything I asked of him, he was going to do.”
Said Gekeler: “He’s very math-minded, and we spent a lot of time breaking things down by the lap, where he needed to be. When he got to a meet, that’s about all I needed to tell him: ‘Am I on pace, or am I not?’ I think he thought about the time and the math in his mind as he ran.”
Framel got a sense of athletic confidence from his academic prowess.
“I always knew the plays,” he said. “And I always knew not just how I was going to do things, but I knew for the team what the goal was – why are we doing this? I could trust myself. I knew what I was doing was sound, so I could work on the how and not worry about the why.”
Likewise, his brain helped him in distance running, like when he’d run a 1:12 first lap when the plan was to run 1:25.
“OK, so for the next three laps, if I run a 1:27 and a 1:24 … and every time I came around I was able to add it up and do my splits as I was running and know roughly where I was at,” Framel said.
On top of everything else, Framel is one of many students at Kit Carson involved in community service, and he’s also spent the past four summers working as a ranch hand – checking on animals, checking and building fences, and branding animals.
In that sense, he seems to be preparing himself for one of his potential interests – becoming a Ralphie Handler, the term for the brave students who steer Colorado’s buffalo mascot on its sprint around the football field at games.
Meanwhile, Framel figures to have more downtime than he’s used to once he starts his collegiate coursework – though the rigors of aerospace engineering will no doubt be challenging.
“I do intend to do some intramurals,” Framel said. “And I’m also expecting college classes will take up more time outside of class. And I’ll probably at some point look around and try to get a college job. There’s a lot of things I could try, different parts of life.”
But life as a five-sport athlete and valedictorian, that was something to remember, too.
“I’m prepared to move on to the next chapter, but I’m also sad about it,” Framel said. “It’s going to be a transition going from three hours of practice every day to maybe an hour and a half of intramurals once a week. It’s going to be a very different first couple of months.”
