PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — It’s been a tough year since Central Catholic High School senior Myles Broadus celebrated the Rams’ football state championship.
Rams coaches delivered championship rings to Myles’ home in April as the pandemic started to set in. Just a few short months later, any semblance of normalcy that still remained was ripped away from the Rams defensive back and his family in a fire.
Myles, who lives with his grandparents, woke up to someone banging on his bedroom door. He ran outside with his grandpa and once he realized the house was on fire, ran back inside to get his sister.
“We ran out of the house and that’s when the first explosion went off,” Myles said. “Me and my grandpa, we went back inside and got my great grandmother and carried her out.”
Myles heard a second explosion while he was inside. Once everyone was safely out, Myles remembers stepping back and watching the flames shoot high above the roof.
“That’s something I’ll never forget,” he said.
Myles escaped the fire with everything that really mattered — but he lost his championship ring in the blaze.
“I miss my ring, I will say that. That’s something I definitely, definitely miss,” he said.
But what Myles thought to be lost forever was restored.
Jeff Kersten, Central Catholic’s director of football operations, said he and Coach Guthrie had the ring company make a replacement and they presented it to Myles on the one-year anniversary of the Rams’ state championship win.
The gift was well-received.
“I’m so grateful to have people like this in my life,” Myles said, adding that he would always treasure the ring. “[It] represents exactly what Coach said, a family to me. What we did, what we were able to do — the coaches, the staff, the players, everybody here — and it just holds so much more weight than just a ring.”
