Pair of Aces

Just east of mid-town Wichita on the evening of June 20, Norman Rockwell would have been pleased to set his canvas and capture a moment for posterity. On a playground across the street from College Hill Park, things were as they should be in the summertime: six-year-olds waved at coach-pitched baseballs; a parishioner cut the grass at Blessed Sacrament Church; a family too young yet for baseball, but old enough for ice cream cones, ambled up a brick side street. Occasional traffic coasted by. The sun had turned the corner. Shade trees cooled the air. But, something anomalous found its way into this portrait of summer. It didn't fit. Below Douglas Avenue to the south, on a narrow uphill slab at the very north end of the park, two young men were trucking uphill in 10-yard bursts, wobbling their way back down, holding down their lunch and busting up it again - and again. Time after time. Their names: Arthur Brown and Bryce Brown, Wichita East senior and junior. According to some scout services, they are the top two football recruits in the nation in their respective classes. Zig-zagging back toward the start line, hands on hips, willing himself not to collapse with each clomp of his cleat, Arthur, needing a pick-me-up, muttered barely audibly, "What number was that?" Enter Brian Butler - volunteer trainer, mentor, mediator and friend to the Browns and several others on the hill. He towers above Arthur on the hilltop, the landscape accentuating his 300-pound figure, and from somewhere deep he answers the question - in retort: "You're too good for that!" he insists. "It doesn't matter how many we do, Fireman!" That's his nickname. It's taken from a title by 'Lil Wayne that Arthur put as the theme song on his highlight tape. "Don't think about it! Don't think about your feelings. I could run you all night, and it wouldn't matter," Butler continued. Welcome to the show - 100 uphill sprints forward, backward and sideways (up an agility ladder) for two and a half hours, broken up by vigorous stretching and concluded with about ten 40-yard dashes. This is how the top prospect in the nation out of the Class of 2008 spends two days per week. Scout.com says he's No. 1, and he's getting the national exposure to back it up. The story of how he got there begins in the summer of 2006. Butler took Arthur and Bryce to an Oklahoma University camp. The two not only held their own against more heavily recruited Oklahomans and Texans, but wowed spectators and competition. OU head coach Bob Stoops pulled Butler aside and told him that Arthur was the real deal and would win a Butkus Award someday (given annually to the top college linebacker in the nation). After the 2006 high school season, Butler prepared the Browns for the U.S. Army All-American Bowl. They hit the swimming pool for Butler's water workouts that he got from his "NBA guy." After a month of that, they went back outside for their speed, agility and hill workouts. Then in early January 2007, the two brothers attended the U.S. Army combine in San Antonio. There, Arthur solidified his place on Tom Lemming's 2008 All-American Watch List and the ESPN 150 Watch List. Four months later, the Browns' burgeoning story hit home. On May 16, Wichita hosted a blockbuster event. College coaches with the clout of national titles and representatives from every media outlet in town congregated for the one-day Nike Sparq Mini Camp held at East High's football field, a site too outdated and small for official City League games to be played on it. But it was sufficient that day. Butler conducted a workout for 57 area players, including the Browns and seven other high school prospects who train in Butler's player development organization, Potential Players. He put them through the rigors. "At first, it was going to be for (me and my brother) to showcase our talent and whoever else was working out with us at the time, like Jaydan (Bird, of Andover Central)," Bryce explained. "But then we talked about it and said if we can get all the best players in Kansas to come to this, they could also benefit from working out in front of Bob Stoops, Urban Meier and Pete Carroll." Pete Carroll in a white, USC Trojans-crested polo and khakis strolled through the grass (overgrown and patchy with clover) with his arms crossed, pondering, making small talk with the smorgasbord of attending coaches. He'd walked sidelines before, but not here, not in Wichita. And yet, there he was, letting Arthur Brown know he'd be there for him anytime, anywhere - even off the beaten recruiting path. Carroll was there - check; Florida's Meier (coming off his first national championship last January) - check; OU's Stoops with linebackers coach Brent Venables - check; Colorado's Dan Hawkins - check. Also, multiple assistants from USC accompanied Carroll, including former NFL Pro Bowl linebacker, Ken Norton, Jr.; Louisiana State was in attendance; Kansas State had a strong presence; and Kansas' Mark Mangino made it, too. The magnitude of the event stirred sporting news pots nationally. The New York Times followed up with a June 4 report on Arthur Brown and the camp. A month later, Sports Illustrated photographed Arthur and Bryce for their "Where Will They Be" section in the July 2 issue. The bold answer to SI's question is the NFL. The corollary, "Where Are They Now," is more definite. Arthur and Bryce Brown are among us, working. On Wednesday and Sunday evenings since March they have been within view from our cars on I-135. When not on the hill at College Hill Park, they're on the East High practice fields getting their work in, growing in speed, quickness and strength. The rusty goal posts, rickety tackling dummies and overgrown shot put circle betray humble circumstances, but none of those things matter. Sufficient space and the will to work are all that's necessary. Back to that day fit for Norman Rockwell, as the Browns and other trainees caught their breath before another haul up the hill, Butler told them a story, its lesson pertinent to their immediate struggle and also prophetic. "I'm going to tell y'all the WSU story again," he began, finding his bearings in a tale he'd told before. "I had Kamerion (Wimbley) out at WSU running stairs." (Nearly a decade ago, Butler began working with the Wichita Northwest graduate and current Cleveland Browns linebacker.) "We were running stairs, right. And I had Kamerion do ten of them. When he was done, he came up to me, and you know what he said afterward? He said, 'You want me to do ten more?' He would have done more! It didn't matter how many I asked him to do," Butler screamed, fully committed at that point, at the climax. "How many would he have done?" he asked, his voice cracking at 'how.' "As many as I asked him to do! I made a call that night (to a friend) and said, 'Kamerion's going to the League, man.' I could tell, and he was in just ninth grade. He wanted to work hard." Of course, in addition to work ethic, the NFL requires phenomenal talent. And Wimbley had both (11 sacks as a rookie for the Browns in 2006). Arthur and Bryce Brown aren't far behind. For the past two and a half years, they have focused exclusively on training for football. After Arthur's freshman season, Butler and DeAngelo Evans (who then ran his own player development organization) approached the brothers' parents about working with their sons. "At first, I didn't know what he was talking about," said the brothers' father, Arthur Brown, Sr. "We thought they were just playing and were good players, nothing more." Evans (a former blue-chip running back out of Wichita Collegiate in the mid-90's) since moved on, and Butler went solo with the Browns beginning last November. Today, they are very good players, and approaching greatness. Arthur's feet drive like pistons. Bryce glides over the turf at full stride like a storm cloud over the plain. But it's not just about the end goal; the process surely matters for the Brown brothers. Just as their father dutifully shoulders a cooler full of iced-cold water from his truck to the field for every workout, the Browns have been working when no one is looking. And they're respectful and polite. Visit one of their practices, and they will shake your hand and thank you for coming. Surely at the Bible studies Butler and his players have on Sunday afternoon before conditioning, they have looked at the Parable of the Talents in the Gospel of Matthew. The master tells the servant who turned his two talents into four, "Well done. You have been faithful in the small things, so I will put you in charge of more important things." After playing football together since Arthur was in second grade, Arthur and Bryce enter their final season together before a possible reunion in college. And as they tend to the small things - whether it's running the extra set of sprints, helping the eighth-graders in Butler's organization with stretching or putting together highlight tapes for their teammates - they know bigger undertakings loom.