Montana's Heisman Trophy connection
12/11/2012 12:00:00 AM | Men's Indoor Track, Men's Track and Field, Women's Track and Field
Dec. 11, 2012
Most years it would take the full six degrees of separation before I'm getting within a zip code or 10 of the latest Heisman Trophy winner. Not this year.
I know Montana senior pole vaulter Rebekah Collins, and Collins went to high school with Johnny Manziel, the redshirt freshman quarterback at Texas A&M who won the Heisman Trophy Saturday night.
Both attended Tivy High in Kerrville, Texas, Collins a senior when Manziel was a sophomore. I'm not saying it will get me -- or Collins either -- a day with the Heisman Trophy, but it's a slightly intoxicating connection nonetheless.
"We both ran in the same circles at Tivy because he was on varsity with all my guy friends. Within the athletic realm, everybody kind of knew everyone else," Collins says.
"It's pretty crazy to watch him now on TV. I'm like, `Hey, I know that guy!' "
Collins, who spent her first 10 years in Basalt, Colo., and Manziel both spent their formative years in Kerrville, a city of 22,000 an hour northwest of San Antonio, deep, deep in the heart of Texas and smack dab in the center of Texas Hill Country.
Kerrsville's place in Texas is not totally unlike Missoula's within Montana.
"It's rolling hills, not flat like most people probably think of Texas," Collins says. "We have a bunch of rivers, like the Guadalupe and the Frio, running through. It's a pretty place, and Texas Hill Country has its own unique mentality."
What isn't unique to Kerrville in relation to the rest of Texas is its devotion to football. When Manziel dropped "Tivy Fight Never Dies" in his Heisman acceptance speech Saturday night, Collins -- and every Antler and Lady Antler everywhere -- knew what Manziel meant.
The scenes from "Friday Night Lights," when the town chains its doors and shutters the windows because game time approaches? It's not a Hollywood exaggeration.
"Our town would pretty much shut down for home games," Collins says. "All the storefronts would have `Tivy Fight Never Dies' painted on their windows, and there would be blue and yellow everywhere.
"The football mentality (in Texas) is totally different, especially for someone who moved from Colorado. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Our stadium would be packed for every home game."
It wasn't long before Collins and her classmates knew of Manziel, who would be the Antlers' starting quarterback by his sophomore season.
"You could just kind of tell," Collins says. "It was just like it is now at A&M. He's just an exciting player to watch."
Being two years Manziel's senior, Collins was in Missoula for the best part of the Manziel Show. As a junior and senior at Tivy High, he passed for 64 touchdowns and ran for 64 more, then turned down offers from Oregon and Stanford, among others, to sign on at Texas A&M.
Collins broke the Tivy school record in the pole vault, but it wasn't enough to catch the eye of Oregon, Stanford or Texas A&M, so Collins put the pole away and matriculated at Montana, because she "wanted to try something different for four years."
After one year away from the sport, she contacted Montana's track and field coaches and got back into vaulting. Last spring she qualified for the Big Sky Conference outdoor championships.
She could win an NCAA championship in the pole vault her senior year and it still would likely hardly register with her hometown, not after the attention Johnny Football just brought Kerrville in the state's sport of sports.
"(Winning the Heisman) is a really big deal for Kerrville, because we're just a small town," Collins says. "It's only going to be a matter of time before they update the sign to say, `Welcome to Kerrville, Texas, Home of Johnny Manziel.' "
Players Mentioned
