Brett Holmes hauls in a pass against Silver Lake. / Photo by: Sue Moss
Brett Holmes will play football at Colby College next season.
Whitman-Hanson Regional High senior Brett Holmes has committed to play football at Colby College.
Holmes, who has only received two B’s throughout high school and is a member of the Business Honor Society, said the choice came down to finding a school that would challenge himself academically and set him up for a bright future.
“When I went to other schools, they tended to focus on Brett Holmes as a football player, and how they will make me a better football player,” Holmes said. “When I went to Colby, they emphasized making me a better man as well as a better football player.
“They want to make their players better people and players, rather than just a good football player, and they do so by requiring players to do community service, and mandatory academic sessions.”
The 5-foot-10, 160-pound Holmes was a three-year starter at cornerback and a two-year starter at wide receiver for W-H.
This past season, Holmes, who served as a captain, was a ball hawk on defense, intercepting a team-leading four passes. He also ranked third on the Panthers with 59 total tackles. On offense, Holmes tied for first on the team with 23 receptions and led W-H with 306 receiving yards and five touchdowns.
W-H football head coach Mike Driscoll, who also coaches Holmes on the boys’ indoor and outdoor track teams, lauded his leadership.
“Brett was an amazing leader, he does everything right off and on the field,” Driscoll said of Holmes, who was the Panthers’ Patriot League Scholar-Athlete recipient. “His hard work rubbed off on the other players and he showed the younger guys that hard work pays off. Colby is getting an amazing-student athlete, with first-class speed, a work ethic that is second to none and a winner.”
Holmes, who was a league all-star this past season, said his most memorable game as a Panther was his final at Dennis M. O’Brien Field – a 21-14 victory over Marshfield on Nov. 10. He hauled in three passes for 64 yards and a touchdown and came away with an interception in that one.
“Marshfield was fun because it was my last game on the field I had been playing on my entire life, and we were playing a top program that honestly thought they were going [to] roll us,” Holmes said. “Everybody on the team played great, and it was just a fun experience to be playing on that field with my friends for the last time. The sub-20-degree wind chill wasn’t too fun though.”
Holmes said the main lesson he learned during his tenure at W-H that he hopes to carry over to the collegiate level is just hard work.
“W-H taught [me] that you have to work for whatever you want, on the field, off the field, anything, you have to go and work for it,” he said.
Colby, which competes in the New England Small College Athletic Conference of NCAA Division III, finished 1-8 last season.
“Right now, I’d be quite the undersized defensive back, but if I can put on some muscle it’ll help,” Holmes said. “I expect to succeed by just doing whatever the coaches ask me to do.”