(WHNT) — Strength, grit and determination are all words that we use to describe football and the athletes who play the game. The same can also be said about a brave young man named Reese Colburn.
Reese was born with hypoplastic lotar syndrome, a rare heart condition, that required him to have three open heart surgeries all before his third birthday, and with a condition like this, Reese would be forced to fight his entire life, and he did exactly that.
Reese’s larger-than-life personality carried him forward and helped keep his eyes on his dream job of one day being a football coach.
Randolph head coach David Lloyd was the man who was able to help make that dream a reality.
Coach Lloyd offered Reese a position as an assistant coach to help with the Raiders’ wide receivers, which is the same group that Reese’s father, Roman, coaches.
Reese wanted to be a coach who lived what he preached, and part of that was having fun and enjoying the game. That was most important to him as he lived his life every day with that same spirit, and Reese had so much more to pass on to his players, but he never got the chance.
Three days after Coach Lloyd’s call to Reese, he passed away on April 20, 2025, after battling his heart condition for 20 strong years
“He lived life to the fullest, he never surrendered, and he never sweated the small things,” Reese’s mother, Jennifer, said.
“I look back and all the heroes I had growing up, Evel Knievel, Coach Bryant, Reese is my hero, and he’s the person I look up to the most,” Reese’s father, Roman, said. “He’s been so strong, like his mother said. He went through so many surgeries, and he smiled through every bit of it. Until the day I die, he’ll be my hero from here on out.”
When kickoff comes this fall for Randolph, Reese won’t be on the sidelines, but he’ll be there in spirit with his initials RC on the back of every Raiders’ helmet serving as a reminder to live life like Reese Colburn.
“For Reese to handle such a tragic situation with such humbleness, grace, positivity that he handled with, I think we can all learn something from that,” Randolph head coach David Lloyd said. “Every now and then, we catch glimpses of greatness, and I think that’s what we caught in Reese. We talk to our guys all the time about a ‘get to’ attitude and a ‘have to’ attitude, and nobody had a better ‘I get to’ attitude than Reese Colburn. I don’t think I’ve ever met a kid who was as big of a warrior as Reese Colburn.”
The Colburn family hopes to keep Reese’s legacy alive with the Heart of Warrior scholarship presented to a senior boy athlete at Fort Payne High School.
If you’d like to donate to the Reese Colburn “Heart of a Warrior” Memorial, you can do so here.
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