A trio of football players highlighted Homewood-Flossmoor High School’s college signing event Wednesday, Feb. 7, in the school’s auditorium.
Running back Brandon Brigham signed his letter of intent with Southeast Missouri State, where he’ll major in kinesiology. He hopes to someday be a coach or athletic trainer when his playing days are through.
“It’s really important to me, knowing that I’m going to a school that wants me to be there,” Brigham said. “I plan on earning the starting job and going on to have a great legacy there.”
He also considered Eastern Illinois, Valparaiso and Ball State, among others.
One of the things that set the Redhawks apart was former SEMO wide receiver Ryan Flournoy, an H-F graduate. Flournoy was recently invited to the NFL combine and may be drafted in April.
Brigham spoke to Flournoy over the summer.
“He gave some advice on what to do for my senior year and I ended up balling out,” Brigham said. “He told me to just keep going, keep grinding and good things are going to come.”
Had Brigham chosen Eastern Illinois, he would have remained teammates with Jordyn Stewart. The linebacker inked with the Panthers Wednesday.
The third football signee was Jalen Cole, who will matriculate to St. Ambrose in Iowa. Cole committed to the Fighting Bees in January. He’ll play interior offensive line.
“It’s kind of a dream come true, what I’ve been work for for the last four or five years,’ Cole said.
Cole plans to major in engineering, eventually getting into civil engineering. He also visited Roosevelt University and Olivet Nazarene.
Another future engineer signing Wednesday was fencer Aubrey Testroet. She’s still undecided between civil and computer engineering at Cleveland State.
“Civil engineering, I’ve had a lot of classes in it and I have experience in it. It piques my interest,” Testroet said. “There are also times where computer engineering takes my view. Growing up, I’ve always liked computers and fixing computers. It would be fun to make use of that.”
She said the chemistry among the Vikings — the ones at Cleveland State — on the fencing team was one of the deciding factors.
“It feels good to represent both H-F and Cleveland State at the same time,” Testroet said. “This is a prideful feeling, having made it.”
Habtamu Epley will head to the nation’s capital to run track for Howard University. The plan is to run the 800- and 1,600-meter races for the Bison.
“I wanted to go to school for both athletics and education, but mostly education because it’s really hard to have a career in sports these days,” Epley said.
Attending a Historically Black University wasn’t something Epley was looking for. It just worked that way. He also considered the University of San Diego, among a few others.
“I’ve heard the (Howard) coaches will go to your classes, make sure you’re on top of your grades,” Epley said. “I just want to be as good as I can be, definitely make it to nationals. That’s my goal.”
John Hockenberry was the other Vikings cross country runner signing his name Wednesday. He’s headed to Olivet Nazarene.