Fans
watching the Notre Dame football game at Washington last September
may have been struck by Coach Charlie Weis's daring in calling
a pass play with the team at its own 1-yard-line to start its
first possession.
Daring had nothing to do with it.
Weis was fulfilling a promise he'd made a few days earlier to
a 10-year-old boy named Montana Mazurkiewicz. Fighting an inoperable
brain tumor, the boy had been told earlier in the week by doctors
that there was nothing more they could do for him. The avid Irish
football fan, named for Joe Montana, asked if a player could visit
him. Weis came to the family's home in Mishawaka instead.
According to various news accounts, the boy was at that point
paralyzed from the waist down and in constant pain. When his mother
suggested Montana toss her the football Weis had brought with
him, he was too weak to comply, so Weis assisted with the arm
movement.
The pair talked football, and Weis told the boy about his 10-year-old
daughter, Hannah, who has global development delay, a rare disorder
said to be similar to autism. Before leaving, Weis agreed to let
Montana call Notre Dame's first play of the game at Washington.
He chose "pass right."
Conventional football wisdom called for a run in that position
to advance the ball away from the goal line and reduce the chances
of a safety. But Weis had told quarterback Brady Quinn about the
ailing boy's play call before the game. As the coach would later
tell reporters, Quinn asked, "What are we going to do? I said,
'We have no choice. We're throwing it to the right.'"
Quinn completed a short pass to the right to tight end Anthony
Fasano, who leapt over a defender on his way to a 13-yard gain
and a first down. Notre Dame went on to win 36-17.
But Montana Mazurkiewicz didn't see the play or any of the game.
He had died the day before.
"It was an amazing play," mother Cathy Mazurkiewicz told a reporter
after the game. "Montana would have been very pleased. I was very
pleased. I was just so overwhelmed. I couldn't watch much more."
(January 2006)
