The smallest gesture of kindness from a Greenwood Community High School teacher turned into a once-in-a-lifetime experience for one of his students.
A simple Reddit post set off a chain of events that led to senior Connor Yeager, a diehard Miami Dolphins fan, hanging out on his favorite team’s sideline last weekend when they played the Indianapolis Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Yeager was invited to the Marriott hotel downtown the night before the game, where star defensive lineman Davon Godchaux greeted Yeager and presented him with a jersey, tickets and pregame sideline passes. After the game, Godchaux invited Yeager to join him in the locker room to meet the rest of the team.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
It all began innocently enough. Derek Fischer, a dietician who is in his first year teaching nutrition and wellness at the high school, posted on a Reddit page for Dolphin fans asking for information that could help him build a greater connection with Yeager, a senior with autism who regularly stops into Fischer’s classroom to talk about the team.
“All I was looking for was a chance to engage with Connor on a deeper level,” said Fischer, who admittedly has never been much of a football fan.
The post received a variety of responses from fans, but it also somehow caught the attention of the Dolphins’ marketing department, who reached out to Yeager’s father, Jeff, on Nov. 7, three days before the game in Indianapolis.
After meeting Godchaux at the team hotel the night before, Connor got to stand on the sidelines during pre-game warmups. It was there that he got to meet former Dolphin quarterback Dan Marino, a Hall of Famer who now works with the team as a special adviser.
He also got another visit from Godchaux, which helped win over not only Connor — who told Godchaux that he’s his new favorite player — but his father.
“(Godchaux) took his time out of warmups to come say hi to him, and I didn’t see him say hi to anybody else on the field beside players. So that was pretty big for me,” Yeager said.
During the game, Connor sat in the stands with his father, Fischer, and Laura Stadtfeld, who heads up the high school’s nutrition and wellness department. They were largely surrounded by Colts fans, but Connor didn’t care. He continued to vocally back his team — “I’m sending them the power to beat the Colts,” he told his dad — and it worked, as Miami pulled off a 16-12 victory.
Godchaux invited Connor down into the Dolphins’ locker room after the game, where they celebrated together (“I told you we’d get that W,” the lineman said) and shared some final moments before the visiting team hit the road.
Connor might not have been quite ready to let go. He offered to go with the team back to Florida if they needed him to, his father said. But while his direct affiliation with the team was, at least for now, short-lived, it certainly had an impact on Yeager and those closest to him.
Jeff Yeager admits the weekend converted him into a Dolphins fan as well.
“They made him feel special,” he said. “That’s all I cared about.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, Connor Yeager wore Godchaux’s number 56 jersey to school on Monday, and he was rocking it again on Friday.
Fischer remains mind-blown about how quickly his simple effort to get closer with Connor snowballed into something much bigger. He admits to dreaming about some big possibilities after the Dolphins reached out, but the team managed to one-up anything his imagination could have conjured.
“Every crazy fantasy I had somehow happened,” Fischer said.
A weekend of dreams come true that Connor will remember for the rest of his life.
