Hurlburt’s mentorship helps third-grader live life with no limits
5/6/2021 4:32:00 PM | Football
When final exams wrapped up at the University of Montana in late April, six Grizzly football players made a 40-mile trip down the Bitterroot for some fun in the sun, volunteering to spend recess with Valerie Pateman's third-grade class at Stevensville Elementary.
As you'd expect, when the Griz walked in, the class lit up, with dozens of kids giddy for the chance to spend an hour or so on the playground with their football heroes.
But for little Holden Neal and UM defensive end Alex Hurlburt, the recess period was more than just a chance to toss a ball around. It was the culmination of a semester's worth of Zoom calls and letter exchanges – the first face-to-face meeting in a unique mentorship that has blossomed into an inspiring friendship.
Born with half of his left arm missing, Hurlburt made national headlines in 2018 when he signed to play Division-I football at Montana, where he has spent the last two years working his way up the depth chart, disability be damned.
Like Hurlburt, Neal has grown up with much of his right leg missing and requires the use of a prosthetic, which doesn't appear to slow him down when he's running a route to catch a pass.
But when Neal moved with his family from Hamilton to Stevi in 2020, Pateman came to realize his leg was part of the reason he was slowing down in the classroom as he tried to adjust to life at a new school.
Determined to help him succeed, she set out to find him a mentor - someone who has been there and done that and could relate to him in his unique struggle to fit in and help him realize his full potential.
As a long-time Griz fan, she contacted head coach Bobby Hauck on a whim. As it turns out, the Griz have just the guy for the job, and the result is a third-grader beginning to learn that anything is possible, even if he doesn't know it yet.
"I have a prosthetic leg, and I was always sad," said Neal during the Grizzly recess visit.
"So, Ms. Pateman said she was going to have me talk to this guy named Alex, and that's how our friendship started. We talk about school and football, and it makes me happy because I can tell my friends I have another friend who is a Griz player."
Since December, Hurlburt and Neal have exchanged letters and carved out an hour each Wednesday afternoon to jump on a Zoom together and talk. Just talk.
It doesn't even matter what the subject is. Just chat, ask questions, and engage with another person who might know a little about what the other is going through.
And since those calls began, Pateman, Stevensville school counselor Lee Starck, and Hurlburt himself have seen Neal come out of his shell.
"He has grown tremendously. A lot of people might not notice it because he's just that kind of kiddo, but I love to see it. Some of these other kids can't believe this is happening to him when it's a normal experience in his eyes. So, his confidence has grown," says Pateman.
Enter Hurlburt, one of the few people around the area who knows exactly what that experience is like.
"At first, he was really shy, just like I was as a kid. So, I totally understood that," said Hurlburt.
"But I've seen him open up and be able to have good conversations with me. It's also been cool to hear from his counselor and teacher how much he gets from those talks and how they have seen big improvements in his daily attitude."
Starck, who facilitates the weekly Zoom session between Hurlburt and Neal from his office, says the growth he's seen in a few short months has been a "beautiful thing to watch."
"There has been a lot of growth in Holden's confidence, his self-esteem, and his belief in himself to be able to manage tough situations. He gets to learn from Alex, who has his own ways of adapting and doing things and finding creative ways to solve problems that maybe other students don't have to contend with.
"It's really given Holden a new perspective in realizing he can solve problems, it might just look different than how other students do it," said Starck.
Hurlburt has made a football career out of proving people wrong. Going into his junior year of high school, he wasn't sure he'd even be able to earn a starting job in his native West Salem, Oregon. By the end of the year, he was the conference Defensive MVP, not allowing his perceived disability to set him back one step.
Now that same attitude is turning him into a leader off the field, and it appears he's found the perfect fit for a mentorship.
"Holden has a lot of great people in his life, but now he gets to have someone outside his family and friend group that he can look up to and talk through a lot of different challenges. He gets to see someone model resilience, model hard work, and model leadership," Starck adds.
"I can't say enough about Alex and the compassion he's shown. I don't know if he's been a mentor before, but he has natural leadership abilities and an innate ability to connect with Holden."
Hurlburt also says he grew up rejecting this sort of outside mentoring when it was on offer, so the weekly Zooms with Neal are just as much about learning as they are teaching life lessons.
"It's honestly just as fun, if not more, for me than it is for him. I look forward to these meetings. I have them on my schedule, and I'm always excited to make the time to do them. It makes me really happy being able to see that it's positively affecting someone else, and just being able to give back like that has been great," says Hurlburt.
"One of the big things we always talk about is just being able to adapt and try new things that he wasn't confident in or wasn't sure he could do.
"My parents did a great job helping me with that when I was younger. But I think it would have been really cool to have a mentor like this, and kind of regret not doing it."
During the Griz visit to Stevi for recess in April, the two may have met in person for the first time, but like old football friends, they immediately started tossing the ball around.
"Playing catch and watching him calling for the ball and running routes was pretty cool, and it was finally good to meet him face to face. Just seeing his reaction with all of us there was pretty special, and seeing that he loves football so much was great." Hurlburt says.
Now with the end of the semester come and gone, Hurlburt says he's hoping to continue mentoring Neal as long as he can and hopes to get him to a Grizzly summer camp where they can continue to bond over their favorite sport.
It's those lessons that football teaches he thinks can have the biggest impact on Neal in the same way the game has impacted him.
"I hope he understands that different things happen to different people, but there is always a way to live correctly," Hurlburt says.
"I would love him to learn more about where I'm at in my life and understand he can do whatever he wants."
As you'd expect, when the Griz walked in, the class lit up, with dozens of kids giddy for the chance to spend an hour or so on the playground with their football heroes.
But for little Holden Neal and UM defensive end Alex Hurlburt, the recess period was more than just a chance to toss a ball around. It was the culmination of a semester's worth of Zoom calls and letter exchanges – the first face-to-face meeting in a unique mentorship that has blossomed into an inspiring friendship.
Born with half of his left arm missing, Hurlburt made national headlines in 2018 when he signed to play Division-I football at Montana, where he has spent the last two years working his way up the depth chart, disability be damned.
Like Hurlburt, Neal has grown up with much of his right leg missing and requires the use of a prosthetic, which doesn't appear to slow him down when he's running a route to catch a pass.
But when Neal moved with his family from Hamilton to Stevi in 2020, Pateman came to realize his leg was part of the reason he was slowing down in the classroom as he tried to adjust to life at a new school.
Determined to help him succeed, she set out to find him a mentor - someone who has been there and done that and could relate to him in his unique struggle to fit in and help him realize his full potential.
As a long-time Griz fan, she contacted head coach Bobby Hauck on a whim. As it turns out, the Griz have just the guy for the job, and the result is a third-grader beginning to learn that anything is possible, even if he doesn't know it yet.
"I have a prosthetic leg, and I was always sad," said Neal during the Grizzly recess visit.
"So, Ms. Pateman said she was going to have me talk to this guy named Alex, and that's how our friendship started. We talk about school and football, and it makes me happy because I can tell my friends I have another friend who is a Griz player."
Since December, Hurlburt and Neal have exchanged letters and carved out an hour each Wednesday afternoon to jump on a Zoom together and talk. Just talk.
It doesn't even matter what the subject is. Just chat, ask questions, and engage with another person who might know a little about what the other is going through.
And since those calls began, Pateman, Stevensville school counselor Lee Starck, and Hurlburt himself have seen Neal come out of his shell.
"He has grown tremendously. A lot of people might not notice it because he's just that kind of kiddo, but I love to see it. Some of these other kids can't believe this is happening to him when it's a normal experience in his eyes. So, his confidence has grown," says Pateman.
Enter Hurlburt, one of the few people around the area who knows exactly what that experience is like.
"At first, he was really shy, just like I was as a kid. So, I totally understood that," said Hurlburt.
"But I've seen him open up and be able to have good conversations with me. It's also been cool to hear from his counselor and teacher how much he gets from those talks and how they have seen big improvements in his daily attitude."
Starck, who facilitates the weekly Zoom session between Hurlburt and Neal from his office, says the growth he's seen in a few short months has been a "beautiful thing to watch."
"There has been a lot of growth in Holden's confidence, his self-esteem, and his belief in himself to be able to manage tough situations. He gets to learn from Alex, who has his own ways of adapting and doing things and finding creative ways to solve problems that maybe other students don't have to contend with.
"It's really given Holden a new perspective in realizing he can solve problems, it might just look different than how other students do it," said Starck.
Hurlburt has made a football career out of proving people wrong. Going into his junior year of high school, he wasn't sure he'd even be able to earn a starting job in his native West Salem, Oregon. By the end of the year, he was the conference Defensive MVP, not allowing his perceived disability to set him back one step.
Now that same attitude is turning him into a leader off the field, and it appears he's found the perfect fit for a mentorship.
"Holden has a lot of great people in his life, but now he gets to have someone outside his family and friend group that he can look up to and talk through a lot of different challenges. He gets to see someone model resilience, model hard work, and model leadership," Starck adds.
"I can't say enough about Alex and the compassion he's shown. I don't know if he's been a mentor before, but he has natural leadership abilities and an innate ability to connect with Holden."
Hurlburt also says he grew up rejecting this sort of outside mentoring when it was on offer, so the weekly Zooms with Neal are just as much about learning as they are teaching life lessons.
"It's honestly just as fun, if not more, for me than it is for him. I look forward to these meetings. I have them on my schedule, and I'm always excited to make the time to do them. It makes me really happy being able to see that it's positively affecting someone else, and just being able to give back like that has been great," says Hurlburt.
"One of the big things we always talk about is just being able to adapt and try new things that he wasn't confident in or wasn't sure he could do.
"My parents did a great job helping me with that when I was younger. But I think it would have been really cool to have a mentor like this, and kind of regret not doing it."
During the Griz visit to Stevi for recess in April, the two may have met in person for the first time, but like old football friends, they immediately started tossing the ball around.
"Playing catch and watching him calling for the ball and running routes was pretty cool, and it was finally good to meet him face to face. Just seeing his reaction with all of us there was pretty special, and seeing that he loves football so much was great." Hurlburt says.
Now with the end of the semester come and gone, Hurlburt says he's hoping to continue mentoring Neal as long as he can and hopes to get him to a Grizzly summer camp where they can continue to bond over their favorite sport.
It's those lessons that football teaches he thinks can have the biggest impact on Neal in the same way the game has impacted him.
"I hope he understands that different things happen to different people, but there is always a way to live correctly," Hurlburt says.
"I would love him to learn more about where I'm at in my life and understand he can do whatever he wants."
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