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Hello, Top Secret Agents! We are grabbing our keycard lanyards and packed lunches to prep for our next office field trip to The Annex, and I'm here to give you the exclusive info that in our next episode, we are headed to the 'HIGH' level.

In traditional Annex fashion, that means we'll encounter all manner of things related to high-ness ;) , but there's one segment in particular we want to try something new with, and that 'something new' is getting you all involved. We're going to be talking about encounters we've had with athletes while in high school, whether we played with them or against them, or maybe just had a class with them, who then later went pro. We've got a few of our own, but we'd love to hear yours as well.

So here's how this will work: if you've got a particularly fun or interesting story about encountering a future pro athlete in high school, tell us about it in the form below. We'll cut off submissions on Monday, read 'em, and then reach out to the folks who submitted our favorites, and get them to record a short little audio clip about it that we can play on the podcast.

We're opening this up to you, the Top Secret Agents, first, and then potentially opening it up to Content Enjoyers after that based on the response. This is an experiment, so keep it classy! We look forward to hearing from you!

Submission link: https://forms.gle/ojKS9D5YscNcKwNW7

Comments

Nathaniel Lowry

Idk if this counts but Tim Boyle is a family friend. Growing up, I used to go to every one of his games in both high-school and college until he transferred out of Uconn. I've only ever been to one NFL game, a preseason game between the packers and ravens while he was still on the roster. There was a packers fan who berated me for wearing a Boyle jersey for some reason. I was like 12. One time he also showed up to a summer practice at my high school and asked for one of my water bottles because he didn't bring any. Being a Tim Boyle fan is an odd experience because I'm like one of 10 people excited to see him play, and every time he does start all the talk I see online is relentlessly negative. Outside of football he's a really nice dude though, even gave me a free lions hoodie when he was playing for them. I don't care if he's on pace to be the worst journeyman backup of the last decade. He once brought my lions madden franchise to the promised land, and teams must keep signing him for a reason.

RedMenace04

This is a cool idea! Just wish I knew some athletes lol

John Hopwood

Pat Connaughton went to my high school. He graduated the year before I started, but he'd still come back over the summer/breaks to use the facilities on our campus. Very nice guy, super humble, down to Earth. Upperclassmen would talk about him all the time, and he lived up to the hype when I encountered him. He came back again with the Larry O'Brien when the Bucks won the title, and took time with new students and old ones he recognized. My school promptly named their newly finished gym after him. Other notable sports alumni include Bill O'Brien, Paul Sorrento, Mike Yastrzremski, Colin Blackwell, and Bob Carpenter among others. (Bo Burnham also went there, but outside of almost playing Larry Bird he's done nothing related to sports 😂)

Troy W

This definitely doesn't count, but right before the start of 8th grade my family went on a trip to Hawaii and we ended up watching Game 7 of the Lakers-Celtics NBA Finals in a sports bar. I'd been watching the 2005 Steelers episode of America's Game a lot and early on in the game, I looked over across the room, saw this huge muscular guy with a girl on his arm and some chains, and thought "That guy kinda looks like Joey Porter." He was a couple drinks in and I'm naturally obnoxious when watching my teams, so as the game got more intense we just started matching each other's energy from across the bar. Then he started yelling "YEAH SC! WE GOT THIS SC!" (I was wearing a USC Football shirt) and I turned to my dad and said, "Yeah that's 1000% Joey Porter." We never went over and talked to him, we just watched Kobe get his 5th ring and then we went our separate ways.

Alex Callan

I played against Shaquil Barrett back in high school in Nebraska. He was at Boys Town and I was at Wahoo. I heard that he and his family moved to Nebraska because of Hurricane Katrina, but this was never confirmed as far as I know. We lost 29-0 to them and he kicked our ass. Dude was crazy athletic. Funny thing was, I thought his brother Kevin was better! Dude won high school wrestling in Nebraska 2 years in a row. I played offensive tackle and tried to block both of these guys. Did not go well lol. On one play, myself and the guard next to me were supposed to double team Kevin up to Shaq to run a veer. Kevin grabbed both of us, one in each arm, slammed us together and he and Shaq made the tackle behind the line of scrimmage. Knew from there it was going to be a rough night. Nice guys though...extremely polite and funny despite working us over lol. I even got a "NICE BLOCK MAN!" the one time I managed to do my job (I threw a decent cut block on him during a pass). Good guys, great ballplayers! It was cool to see Shaq go to Tampa and win a Super Bowl (even at the expense of my Chiefs). Anyway, that's my story.

Ben P

I grabbed drinks with Franz Wagner at a bar in Ann Arbor. I told him I'd be playing 3on3 basketball the following morning with my buddies at the university gym and the next morning he actually showed up. He didn't play with my friends or anything and I have no idea if he came to the gym for a different reason but it was a cool moment. Great guy.