{"id":322,"date":"2009-05-14T18:21:35","date_gmt":"2009-05-14T23:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/?p=322"},"modified":"2021-06-14T23:15:30","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T04:15:30","slug":"getting-a-coaching-assist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/2009\/05\/14\/getting-a-coaching-assist\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Notre Dame Use a Play Drawn Up by a Terminally Ill Child in a Game?"},"content":{"rendered":"

SPORTS LEGEND<\/span><\/u>: Notre Dame used a play called by a terminally ill child in an actual game.<\/p>\n

Montana Mazurkiewicz was a 10-year-old child who was dying from an inoperable brain tumor. The boy, a South Bend, Indiana resident named after famed Notre Dame quarterback Joe Montana, was naturally a huge fan of Notre Dame.<\/p>\n

In September 2005, a week before the much anticipated Notre Dame\/Washington Huskies match-up (anticipated because the Washington Huskies were coached by Tyrone Willingham, who preceded then-current Notre Dame coach, Charlie Weis, as coach at Notre Dame) Weis visited the young Mazurkiewicz.<\/p>\n

\"weisandmontana_release\"<\/p>\n

Weis agreed to let Montana call the first play against Washington that Saturday. Montana asked him to “pass right.”<\/p>\n

Tragically, Montana Mazurkiewicz did not live long enough to see the game on Saturday. He died at home the Friday before the game.<\/p>\n

The game, by the way, made it as hard as it could on Weis to have the play be called.<\/p>\n

\"63118622b49kkhfx1\"<\/p>\n

After a long opening drive, Washington ended up fumbling the ball and Notre Dame recovered at Notre Dame’s own 1 yard line!<\/p>\n

Now, when you get the ball on the 1 yard line, you almost always run the ball first, because for a pass, the quarterback has to drop back, and if you BEGIN on the 1 yard line, you’re dropping back into your own end zone, and if you get sacked, it’s 2 points for the other team! So teams almost always run the ball until they’re safely out of their own end zone, and THEN they throw the ball.<\/p>\n

However, Weis held true to his promise, and Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn dropped back and threw a pass to the right and connected with Tight End Anthony Fasano, who then leaped over a defender for a 13-yard gain. <\/p>\n

\"quinn\"<\/p>\n

Notre Dame ended up winning 36-17.<\/p>\n

Montana’s mother on the play said: <\/p>\n

\nIt was an amazing play. Montana would have been very pleased. I was very pleased. I was just so overwhelmed. I couldn’t watch much more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What a sweet job by Weis and Notre Dame.<\/p>\n

STATUS<\/span><\/u>: True.<\/p>\n

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SPORTS LEGEND: Notre Dame used a play called by a terminally ill child in an actual game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football-legends"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7MjWh-5c","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4236,"href":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/4236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legendsrevealed.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}