STAFFORD – The Stafford co-op football team has a draft to pick weightlifting teams for the summer at the beginning of June. Coach Brian Mazzone came in to see what was going on at one point and noticed Joel Budd’s name still up on the board.
“Why hadn’t anybody picked Budd yet?” Mazzone wanted to know.
“He’s not coming here,” the kids said. “Yes, he is,” Mazzone said. “No, he’s going to Suffield Academy. That’s what everybody tells us.”
“He’s coming here,” Mazzone said.
The first day of summer lifting, there was Budd, all 6 feet 8 and 335 pounds of him.
He’s a freshman.
Budd is from Somers, part of the co-op with Stafford and East Windsor. Before he even played one down of high school football, he had already had a scholarship offer from Syracuse . He’s visited Boston College. He wants to go to Rutgers and play in the Big Ten.
“The amount of pancake (blocks) I see and the amount of people I see on the ground is insane,” senior running back Tyler Wolf said. “He’s an absolute monster.
“Running behind him, I feel like a lot of people can’t see me.”
It hasn’t been easy for Budd. Because of his size, people expect a lot and maybe forget that he’s a freshman who is starting varsity and has only played football for a few years.
“It’s been a big step up from youth to high school,” Budd said. “But my team has been a really big help to me, helped me learn the plays and letting me know when I mess up and always being on me, it’s gotten me better.”
Budd, who towers over his teammates, has mostly played on the offensive line after he injured his foot in preseason and had to take some time getting back. He’s slowly been working his way back to play defense for Stafford (2-1), which beat the Coventry co-op 35-6 on Sept. 26 and face unbeaten Ellington on Friday.
“I think that’s where it’s unfair for him right now; I have to remind my guys … he’s a freshman,” Mazzone said. “Sometimes he looks like a freshman. Other times, he looks like a 6-8 Syracuse offer. The big thing for us is to speed up those growing pains.”
Budd, who is 15, started playing basketball first, in fourth grade. He said when he was 12, he shot up to 5-10 and has been growing ever since.
He started playing lacrosse last year. But football, which he started only a few years ago, quickly became his favorite.
“It was everyone telling me (to play) and the attention I got for it,” he said. “It kind of pushed me to go play.”
As Mazzone said, he’s still learning. He played youth football in Simsbury two years ago and last year he played for a national youth team in Springfield, Mass.
And of course, there is pressure on him. Pressure because of his size. Pressure, like many top prospects, to go to prep school.
“He was an Enfield kid at first; I grew up with his uncle and I played high school football with his uncle,” Mazzone said. “I heard about him. I think in fourth-fifth grade, he moved to Somers. His grandparents live at the bottom of my street. I had seen him around the neighborhood a few times.
“About seventh grade, I kind of stopped hearing about him. I was like, ‘Oh we’re not going to see him then, he’s probably going to a prep school.’ But last year, he had a friend on the team. He texted me and said, ‘Do you mind if I come to the games on Friday?’ Absolutely. He went to 4-5 games last year. So I felt a little better. But I kind of backed off, I was like, ‘I don’t know what he’s going to do.’”
He didn’t need to worry.
“I’ve been hit up by a lot of coaches,” Budd said. “I came here for the great coaching staff and my friends. I have a lot of friends here.”
He played his first game under the Friday night lights Sept. 13, a 33-0 win over CREC. Then there was a setback to Haddam-Killingworth, a 21-7 loss.
“My first game – it was my first Friday night lights experience,” Budd said. “There was a big crowd, everyone was hyped for the first game. It was a good experience. I feel like I played good for my first game. My main thing right now is just getting quicker and more aggressive. That’s the main thing I want to work on.”
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