Brandywine closes season with Senior Night win, builds momentum for 2026

Published 9:59 am Friday, October 31, 2025

By Max Harden

NILES CHARTER TOWNSHIP — The Brandywine football team closed the 2025 season in winning fashion last week.

The Bobcats defeated visiting Mount Clemens 50-8 in a convincing Senior Night win to finish the season with a 2-7 record. Head coach Jeff Miller liked what he saw from his players throughout the final week of practice.

“Our kids were locked in, we had a great opportunity pregame to hear from some of the members of the 1995 Undefeated Brandywine Football Team, and then they went out and did what we asked them to do,” he said. “The players were communicating with each other, aligning to be successful on defense, played very hard, executed with the most precision we have had all season, and they had an air of confidence about them.”

Following an 0-5 start that saw the Bobcats get outscored 280-63, the team went 2-2 over its last four games, including wins over Benton Harbor and Mount Clemens. Miller highlighted Berrien Springs week as a turning point for his team. The Bobcats jumped out to a 12-0 lead against the Shamrocks before falling 47-26.

“We had a great week of preparation for Berrien Springs and the kids finally started to turn the corner as far as seeing how that translates to game performance,” he said. “We weren’t consistent enough against Berrien to come out with a victory but the kids fought incredibly hard when they could have folded up shop and called it a day. I think they made the connection between their practice habits and game performance, and continued to be focused into the final week against Mount Clemens. We talked about that game really being the first game of next season. It can either keep us on the right trajectory, build momentum for the offseason, recruit more kids to the program, stoke excitement…or it could leave a really bad hangover for months. The seniors did a fantastic job of being more vocal leaders towards the end of the season, and the underclassmen were much more comfortable in what they had to do each day.”

Overall, Miller saw the team make strides with the fundamentals of blocking, tackling and protecting the football. 

“As a staff, we had to step back early in the season and start teaching concepts more simply; there was just a major need for basic, building block fundamentals in terms of skill, technique, and vocabulary,” Miller said. “One of the ideas we talk to the kids about all the time is that you have an opponent who is trying to beat you. That other team is doing everything it can to take the game from you. So, we can’t do things that help them do that. That makes our job infinitely more difficult. So, as the season progressed, it was nice to see our kids take that to heart. 

“We were not committing stupid penalties, we weren’t turning the ball over so much, we weren’t standing around on defense…good things tend to happen, your luck seems to improve when you just play really hard all the time, and it was nice to see that from the kids towards the end of the season.”

During the season, Miller made the decision to elevate freshman quarterback Parker Anglin to starter to accelerate his progress and in an effort to free up senior Kaeden Warfield to allow him to make plays on both sides of the ball.

“Kaeden Warfield is good at football,” Miller said. “That is why we started with him at QB, just put the ball in the hands of our best player. But he really isn’t a QB, and that was limiting his ability to affect the game as much as he could, so making the decision to move to a freshman QB, Parker Anglin, was as much about the team as any other choice we made, maybe even moreso. Warfield has a high football IQ and was an easy player to move around in terms of offense, defense, and special teams. Parker is a typical freshman, physically, but is more mentally mature than that. 

“He took his lumps and made mistakes one expects from a freshman starting QB in a brand new scheme, along with every other player also playing in a new scheme, but showed great aptitude and coachability as the season progressed. He also continues to develop as a leader.”

Miller also highlighted the efforts of players including Will Hubbard, Jaxson Andrews, Kaden Santana, Emerson Gogley and Nylen Goins, who continued to show progress in spite of the season’s challenges.

“Will and Jaxson were great on the offensive line, in terms of being able to pick up new concepts well. Kaden, Emerson and Nylen did a great job at the skill positions on offense, especially someone like Nylen, who was playing football for the first time in high school, as a senior. Ryder Richard was also a senior who played for the first time in high school and became one of our most productive players on defense. Mason Flynn and Brady Okerbloom are freshmen who stepped up, especially to help create more depth and plug holes on defense. We threw a ton at these kids this season, and we are very impressed with how they progressed from the beginning to end of the season.”

Miller thanked the seniors for their dedication to the team and for helping to create the foundation for the program.

“Our seniors were phenomenal,” he said. “It is never easy to undergo a coaching transition, especially as a senior, but they jumped in the deep end right away and never looked back. They understand that getting this program turned around starts with the legacy they leave, and they took that seriously. It was nice to see them get some of their classmates to join, too, even if it was just for one season. I think the mark of a good program is when kids want to try it out, when kids are drawn to it, when there is evidence of kids enjoying the experience; the seniors definitely helped us create that this year.”

While the seniors will be missed, Miller said 19 players who saw snaps on this year’s team are expected to play important roles next season. For Miller, his first full offseason as Brandywine coach will be spent addressing his priorities for the program. 

“We need to get stronger, faster, and learn more football,” he said. “We need to continue to promote growth in our program in terms of the number of kids and also how those kids develop as overall people. Our team GPA is good but we want it to get higher. We will qualify for Team Academic All State, which is awesome! We raised $500 in our Tackle Cancer game, and we will keep finding ways to be involved in the Brandywine community. We need to get our kids to embrace the fact they are leaders in the school, whether they like it or not, and use that platform to improve themselves and their school. 

“Our coaches need to keep getting better. We will be full speed ahead on Nov. 3, and everything we do in the offseason for our kids and coaches will be about continuing to develop happy, healthy, high performance individuals.”

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