alright i want to kick it with you all night

The Dumsches could tell stories about Aaron’s exploits all day, but there are other tales, too, the kind his family would rather forget.

“I remember sitting in the stands - I still get teary-eyed thinking about it,” Alissa says. Sahuaro was down 17-9 with 1:27 left on the clock when he scored a touchdown and a two-point conversion, tying the game, earning his team a co-state championship and sending Breinig, who was retiring that very night, off with his first and only state title. Sahuaro won that game, and Aaron’s heroics continued soon after, at the Class 4A state championship. He threw six passes in 37 seconds, giving Sahuaro a 27-21 lead at the half. He had all the potential in the world,” recalls former Sahuaro football coach Howard Breinig.ĭuring the final game of the 1994 season, Sahuaro’s senior starting quarterback injured his shoulder Aaron, a junior, took over with less than a minute before halftime and his team trailing 21-20. “He was a tall kid, with a rifle arm, and real smart. He was a military brat who’d arrived at Sahuaro High School his sophomore year oozing natural talent. In 1990s Tucson, where football reigned and quarterbacks were king, Aaron Dumsch looked the part. “Wish you could turn back time, go back to that day and relive some of these things.” “Oh gosh, it makes you think,” he says, studying the pages as if they were Aaron himself. Pat reaches toward the coffee table and picks up a scrapbook, titled “A Superstar’s Keepsake,” that Alissa made decades ago to commemorate Aaron’s accomplishments in high school. As time went by, his family and I continued to check in to make sure he still felt that way. And he knows about this article he gave me permission to write it the first time we spoke by phone, in the fall of 2018, when I explained what it would mean to share the story of his struggle with mental illness with a journalist and have his name and photo printed in a national magazine.

Alright i want to kick it with you all night