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6
The sun had set long ago over the lake, and Cooper Madison was sitting on his private balcony. It was early September 2006, and summer was just beginning to succumb to autumn. The days were still plenty hot, but at night you could see your breath.
This was Coop's favorite time of year for many reasons. As a high school student, it meant the beginning of the high school football season, when students everywhere spoke of the upcoming season being the year their team won it all. By the end of September, most of those dreams had already been dealt a crushing blow, and chants of, "Next year, we'll get 'em," filled locker rooms and hallways around the country.
From 1992 to 1996, Cooper Madison never had to talk much about "next year" while starring in three sports at Pass Christian High School in Pass Christian, Mississippi. In all, Cuppah, as it pronounced south of the Mason-Dixon, won 5 state titles in four different sports while playing for the Pirates.
He led his team to two baseball championships and quarterbacked the football team to one his senior year. As a freshman, which would be the only year he wrestled, he won the state title at 171 pounds. After lots of nagging by the basketball coach, Cooper went out for the basketball team his sophomore year and shot his team to the title as a swingman the following season as a junior. He had already committed to Ohio State for football before his senior year, so he chose not to risk injury on the basketball court his senior year, much to the basketball coach's dismay.
Everyone in the country knew, though, that Cooper would never play a down for Ohio State. The only reason he even committed there was as a backup plan, and the fact that he always loved watching the Buckeyes play hard-nosed football. Cooper's father, Jeffrey Madison, was a transplant from Ohio who bled scarlet and gray and Coop knew that it made him a very proud man to say that his son was a Buckeye.
Football, and almost everything else, always took a backseat to baseball, his passion. Coop was 6'5" and 220 pounds as a senior at Pass High, as it is referred to by locals, and his perpetual southern tan accented his light brown hair. He ran the 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds. As a right-handed pitcher his fastball topped out at 98 miles per hour and he had a slider that made high school batter's knees buckle like a belt. It was no secret that he was going to be the first pick of the 1996 Major League Baseball draft and soon would be on a fast track for the majors.
Coop, now feeling like a 28-year-old resident at his own version of a retirement home, thought back to those days as if they happened to a stranger.
He also thought about what it must have been like for his father, Jeffrey Madison, on the day that they became closer through grief.
