Cardinal Newman's Jordon Brookshire named All-Empire Large School Football Player of Year

Jordon Brookshire’s mother graduated from Montgomery High. His father graduated from Rancho Cotate. Brookshire could have attended either of those schools. Instead, he tormented them, just as he bedeviled a lot of local football teams.

A three-year starter at quarterback for Cardinal Newman, Brookshire is our Large-School Football Player of the Year.

He probably never would have wound up a Cardinal if his dad hadn’t decided to take him to a football camp run by Paul Cronin when the kid was about 8 years old. The Brookshires lived in Middletown then, in Lake County, and Jordon continued to attend Cronin’s camp every summer. The two hit it off.

It wasn’t just Brookshire’s relationship with Cronin that sold him on Newman, though.

It was his reluctance to give up either running or passing the football.

“Being a dual-threat guy makes it a little more fun, because you get to do both ends of it,” Brookshire said. “I didn’t want to go to a school where I’d be a dropback passer or a traditional running back.”

So Brookshire immersed himself in Cronin’s read-option system, and he thrived as few others have. A sophomore starting at quarterback is a rarity at any school, but especially at Cardinal Newman. Cronin broke his own mold by putting Brookshire under center as a 10th grader. The coach never regretted it.

Brookshire led the Cardinals to a 31-9 record in three seasons, and a stunning 20-1 mark in the North Bay League. In 2016, he passed for about 2,500 yards, ran for 1,500 more and was involved in more than 50 touchdowns. By Cronin’s estimate, Brookshire threw and ran for better than 11,000 yards during his time at Newman.

Brookshire is a superior athlete. But what made him excel in Cardinal Newman’s offense was his decision making. Play after play, he would stick the ball in the gut of his halfback, read the defensive attack and either hand off to the back or keep the ball and attempt to pick up the yards himself.

Brookshire’s instincts were uncanny.

“He’s a smart kid, obviously, and he put a lot of time into it,” Cronin said. “We broke down film each game, and if he missed one read or two at the most, you’d be surprised. Usually there are five or six decisions you’ll miss. But he had a good feel for it.”

As a junior, Brookshire took the Cardinals to the North Coast Section Division 4 championship game, where they lost 38-21 to Marin Catholic. That stoked his fire.

“I was devastated,” Brookshire said. “As seniors we wanted to make sure we got back to NCS, and try to win this time.”

The Cardinals did just that. They beat St. Bernard’s 44-21 in the D4 title game, bringing Cardinal Newman its first NCS football championship in six years.

Brookshire ran for the Cardinals’ first three touchdowns that day, and passed for the next three. Just a typical game for Jordon Brookshire.