Liberty High Football Coach Ryan Patridge Opens SportStars’ #NeverStop Project With A Tribute To 2019 Graduate, Brock Hammer — A Lion Who Embodied The Term #Scrapper •
All ball coaches are looking for scrappers, high school coaches especially. It doesn’t matter their size. We want tough dudes who just get to work and have a motor that doesn’t stop. Brock Hammer was one of those dudes.
Scrappers are usually fighting for something. They’re wired differently; they’re dogs. It’s not rocket science: It starts in the weight room, and usually scrappers out work people in every aspect of their life.
The scrapper we had at Liberty wasn’t a physical specimen. AT ALL. He wasn’t a super star. Our scrapper was a leader in all aspects. He cared for his teammates, and was a leader by example who turned into a vocal leader because of the growth of confidence.
Let’s talk about that for a second. How does one gain confidence? If you trust yourself, and the work you are putting in, the confidence comes. And that is exactly what happened with this young man. He worked so hard at his craft that he gained confidence, and he knew he was going to win every rep and earn the respect of his teammates.
Brock Hammer stood 5-foot-1, 130 pounds his freshman year. He was a 5th-quarter player (which means he didn’t get into the regular game). If you can find a better name for a scrapper than BROCK HAMMER, I will buy you lunch. He committed himself to the weightroom over the next few years. By his junior year, he earned a starting position. By then he was 5-5, 180 pounds.
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Brock Hammer (32) leads the 2018 Liberty-Brentwood football team onto the field prior to the CIF Div. I-A State Championship game at Cerritos College. (David Gershon photo)
What position did our 5-5, 180-pound Hammer play? DEFENSIVE TACKLE. Brock Hammer was an all league player and an integral part on our 2017 North Coast Section championship team and our 2018 CIF state championship team.
Brock’s life wasn’t easy. He was an orphan who battled many family problems as a child surrounded by drugs and violence. He grew up as a small kid in a rough neighborhood in Vallejo where he didn’t look like everyone else.
Brock Hammer fought, scratched and clawed his way through childhood, just like he did in football. He was then adopted by a family in the Brentwood area and found a new life. It was certainly an adjustment. Once he reached high school, he plugged himself into football and the school’s leadership class.
He was a leader on campus and a leader on the field — a true scrapper. Brock is now in the fire academy and actively fighting fires as a reserve. There is no one I would want to serve our community more than Brock Hammer.