When friends and BYU fans John Sharpe and Nate Hull saw BYU was coming to Ames, Iowa — just a three-hour drive from their homes in Rochester, Minnesota — to play the Iowa State Cyclones, they decided they had to go.
BYU football had been a source of bonding for Sharpe and Hull after Hull and his family moved into Sharpe’s congregation for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints eight years ago.
Now, they would share that love with their sons. Hull would bring his oldest five sons, Chase, Jett, Dash, Rowan and Ryder, and Sharpe would bring his two sons, Harrison and William, to Ames to watch their favorite team in person.
But before they could, Hull died unexpectedly in August while running at the age of 43 — roughly two months before the game.
After overcoming the initial shock of losing his friend, Sharpe decided the trip to Ames should still happen.
“I felt like it would be a good thing for the boys to do something that their dad wanted to share with them, and so I didn’t ever think, ‘No, we’re not gonna go,’” Sharpe told the Deseret News.
It was decided that Hull’s brother, Brenton Hull, would fly in and take his nephews to the game in his brother’s place.
Sharpe wanted to make the game even more special for the boys. He hoped they could at least get a photo with one of the BYU players or coaches.
“I just wanted some sort of memento that we could take away from this game that made it a little more special than just attending. I knew attending would be great, but just something,” he said. “This is just a really hard thing for them to go through, as you can imagine. So any little thing I thought would be just an awesome way to remember the trip.”
Sharpe sent messages to various BYU social media accounts, but he knew they were likely overwhelmed with similar messages and wouldn’t respond.
He then decided to reach out to a friend who had moved from Minnesota to Provo and was also a big BYU fan, hoping he might have a contact with the team.
His friend happened to be in the same ward as Braden Brown, the team’s director of mental health.
According to Sharpe, “the ball started rolling only about five days before” the game in Ames on Oct. 25, and he wasn’t sure if it would work out.
But Brown and the team made sure the boys were going to walk away from the game against Iowa State with more than just a photo. They were going to give them memories that would last a lifetime.
‘A pretty cool gesture’
On Thursday, two days before the game, Sharpe learned there was a chance the Hull boys would be able to go to the team dinner, where they could meet some of the players, and that they would receive signed jerseys.
He also found out that the boys might get field passes to watch the players warm up.
“This is amazing, like, it cannot get better than this,” Sharpe recalled thinking.
He decided to keep it all a surprise. He and Brenton Hull told them that they would drive down Friday to make it “easier” on game day and the boys could hang out at the hotel pool that night.
When they got to Ames, Sharpe planned to drop off the boys and Brenton for the team dinner while he and his sons grabbed their own dinner.
He met Brown at the team’s hotel to thank him and finalize a few things. His two sons came with him, hoping to catch a glimpse of a player walking by.
When Sharpe asked Brown what time he should be back to pick up the Hulls, he was shocked to hear Brown say, “Oh no, you’re gonna be here for this whole thing.”
Then Jack Damuni, director of football relations, gave each of the boys a signed jersey and VIP passes.
Damuni even had a pass for Nate Hull, “which was a pretty cool gesture, and I think a kind of sweet moment for the boys,” Sharpe said.
While at dinner, the boys met several players, including kicker Will Ferrin, defensive tackle Keanu Tanuvasa, cornerback Therrian “Tre” Alexander III, and receivers Parker Kingston and Chase Roberts, who helped make the experience special.
On Saturday, Sharpe, his sons and the Hulls stood on the field at Jack Trice Stadium, watched the Cougars warm up and threw a game ball around. It was then that Brown told Sharpe that the boys would lead the team out of the tunnel.
“It was pretty emotional. They could have stopped earlier, and we would have been absolutely blown away with the generosity,” Sharpe said. “But just to kind of take it one step higher to something like that, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, was a pretty cool gesture.”
‘They were celebrating these boys’
That moment was a major highlight of the trip. But it was topped later that day when, once again, BYU outdid itself.
Brown had told Sharpe that if BYU beat Iowa State, the team would bring them into the locker room to join in on the postgame celebration.
BYU trailed for the majority of the game, leaving the trip to the locker room up in the air.
“If the team loses, we understand, and we’ve had a great trip, like, it’s good no matter what,” Sharpe recalled thinking.
Then at the start of the fourth quarter, quarterback Bear Bachmeier threw a 27-yard touchdown to Kingston to put BYU up 34-27 for the Cougars’ first lead of the game.
Two plays later, Faletau Satuala picked off Rocco Becht and returned it 40 yards for a touchdown, extending BYU’s lead to 41-27.
“It kind of felt like destiny was there, that the win was maybe kind of just the crowning event of this whole weekend, and it really made for something special in the locker room too,” Sharpe said.
Near the end of the game, Brown texted Sharpe and told him to bring everyone down to the field, where they congratulated the team and followed them into the locker room.
Inside the locker room, they watched the team celebrate, head coach Kalani Sitake’s postgame speech and the team prayer. Then Sitake came over to the boys and “maximized every effort that he had” with the boys, according to Sharpe.
He told the boys that it was “great to have you here tonight” before he hugged them and pushed them to the center of the team.
“The team is all around, and they turned some music on,” Sharpe said. “Rather than the team celebrating, they were celebrating these boys, and that was kind of the cherry on top to all of that.”
Fresh off throwing for 307 yards and two touchdowns, Bachmeier, who had been busy the night before at dinner, also took the time to visit with the boys in the locker room.
‘Heavenly Father is aware of of us’
For Sharpe, the weekend was a reminder of love and service.
“All these players didn’t have to come up and spend the time that they did with us. But there was like a genuine love. That goes for the coaches,” he said. “Braden Brown was just phenomenal. We never felt like we were imposing on the team.”
He hopes the trip taught the boys a valuable lesson, too.
“I hope it taught them that there’s someone always looking out for you, that Heavenly Father is aware of us, and sometimes he uses other people to help answer your prayers,” he said.
If Sharpe could tell the BYU football team one thing, it would be “thank you.”
“I think biggest thing would be just thank you for making a core memory for these — for all of us, for the boys, for myself, for something that will, like I said in my post, that I hope this memory will get even sweeter with time. (It was) something special, where we saw a lot of divine intervention to make some miracles happen. It was pretty cool."
