His grandfather hugged him, his dad got misty-eyed and his teammates cheered enthusiastically. All Jack Wetters could do is grin and gaze down at the hardware in his hands – a Golden Helmet Player of the Year award.
“I was stunned, to say the least,” said Wetters, the sophomore quarterback for Bay City All Saints High School. “It’s the pinnacle, really – there’s only four a year, so it’s very special.”
Wetters’ win cemented him into a tradition literally like no other – a partnership between The Bay City Times and Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling that goes back 59 years. In that span, more than 2,100 prep football players have won a weekly Golden Helmet for excellence on the gridiron.
Another 250 – the fraternity Wetters joined on Nov. 21 – have been honored as players of the year in Class A, B, C and D throughout The Times’ coverage area. Wetters was the Class D winner; the other 2023 honorees were Aidan Robinson, Bay City Western (Class A); Max Fellows, Essexville Garber (B); and Jayce Sears, Laker (C).
Everything about the Golden Helmet is unique and rooted in tradition. Heck, even down to the plaques – every single one for six decades has been made by Ahler’s Trophy Shop, a family business in Essexville.
Jared Little is the first-year general manager of Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling, and he was on hand to present the year-end awards and see the reactions of the winners, their families and their teammates.
“It was pretty awesome – you can feel the importance of the award and how much it means to these guys,” Little said. He’s learned this year that some of his employees or their family members have won a Golden Helmet; some even brought plaques into work to show them off.
“It’s impacted a lot more people than I knew,” he said. “We’re trying to take it to the next level. Our goal going forward is to make it even more rewarding to these kids.”
The Golden Helmet ties together generations of football greatness across dozens of communities, from farms of the Thumb on into the pine forests Up North. Three sets of fathers and sons, and six sets of brothers, have won the year-end honor. Four year-end winners have gone on to play in the NFL.
“People sometimes don’t realize the importance of it,” said Tom Herek, Wetters’ grandfather and a longtime football coach, adding that the pride of winning extends beyond the player. “It’s not just the kid, but the entire school. This really is a team award.”
Lee Thompson, who has covered high school sports at The Times for 27 years and decides weekly and year-end winners, agrees wholeheartedly.
Thompson has story after story about the significance of winning a Golden Helmet. Like the former NFL player who kept his Golden Helmet on the wall next to a photo of himself tackling O.J. Simpson. Or the winner who dug through the rubble of a house fire, looking for his plaque.
“Every time I go to someplace I’m rarely at, like Gladwin, I look at their trophy case. And there’s their Golden Helmets,” Thompson said. “It’s something that is cherished by a lot of places and a lot of teams.”
How unique is the Bay City-area Golden Helmet? It’s the only such award sponsored in Michigan by Coca-Cola. And though there’s evidence that it once was awarded across the country in conjunction with Coca-Cola, it appears to have dwindled to a handful of states over the years.
Those plaques in trophy cases across mid-Michigan show the winners’ long-lasting impact on their school, proof that they made their mark during their time in those hallways and on the football field. That might explain why the word “special” came up so many times in my interviews for this column.
“It grows in importance with each passing year and at some point, they end up digging it out of a box in the basement and looking on it with different eyes,” Thompson said. “Those days of playing football with their buddies will mean a lot to them for the long haul, and this plaque is confirmation of a job well done.”
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