What about this season?
After Friday night’s 47-6 victory over visiting Bethel at Memorial Stadium, the Bulldogs are 8-0.
They’re ranked No. 7 in the state and have a roster loaded with talent and experience. That includes 18 seniors, four of whom were all-state last season.
As for no magic, let IncrediBret explain.
He’s the popular Miami Valley magician who’s performed for over a quarter century — usually wearing his trademark bright red vest or sport coat and a black fedora — at parties, weddings, schools, corporate functions and on big stage shows.
He’s also the Bulldogs’ head coach.
“I do magic eight months out of the year, but I don’t book any shows during football season,” Bret Pearce explained. “This time of year, outside of the classroom, all my attention is on football.”
While his players may have a similar mindset, listen to the star of the team, Blake Brumbaugh — the magnificent senior wide receiver and defensive back whose storied family tree goes back to his great grandfather, Carl Brumbaugh, a celebrated Ohio State and University of Florida quarterback and halfback who went on to play nine seasons in the NFL in the 1930s, mostly with the powerful Chicago Bears.
As he stood in the end zone surrounded by fans following Friday’s night’s latest victory, Brumbaugh talked about Pearce:
“He has some weird tricks. He has one where he pulls a bowling ball out of a little suitcase. A three-inch suitcase!
“He’s pretty amazing.”
Another person in the crowd talked about the way IncrediBret can make sponge bunnies appear in your hand and you’ll have no idea how they got there.
“I’ve seen him several times and I’m still baffled by a lot of his tricks,” said Joe Pearce, Bret’s 77-year-old father, a former football standout at Mansfield Madison and Bowling Green, who drives 2¼ hours from Mansfield every Friday to be on the Bulldogs’ sideline. He’s been doing that the entire 18 years his son has been the coach.
A few afternoons ago I visited Pearce in the Milton-Union classroom where he teaches science mostly to ninth-graders, but to some juniors and seniors, too. It was his free period and we talked about football and family and some sleight of hand.
“I brought a box of stuff in case you want to see a trick,” he said before going over to his desk and taking out two paper bags, one of which he set off to the side.
From the other he pulled out a Rubik’s Cube and told me to twist it around several times.
“As you do that, I want to tell you there are 43 quadrillion possible combinations,” he said as a bit of IncrediBret flickered to life in front of me. “There’s a good chance you put it in a position it’s never been in before. I’m going to try to solve it magically when it’s inside the bag and I can’t see it. "
He soon took my Rubik’s Cube back out and said: “I have a problem. You’ve already solved it!”
He held up the cube I’d twisted and reached into the forgotten bag to take out a different cube that was identical. All six sides were twisted into the same patterns as mine.
Pearce sometimes brings magic into the classroom, like making something levitate and using it as a lead-in to the study of gravity, the force levitation seems to defy.
Credit: Mia's Photos
Credit: Mia's Photos
I asked him, when it comes to football, would he say this season was magical. He reacted to the question differently than I expected:
“Oh no, this season is about talented kids and all the hard work they have put in. And to pretend I’m the reason for any of this would make me feel awkward.”
While he said he saw no “overlaps” between being a football coach and a magician, his wife, Michelle — a speech and language pathologist for preschoolers and first-graders in the Northmont school district — certainly did:
“He loves to entertain, to make people smile, and I think it’s all related.
“As a coach, he’s obviously bettering those kids with the things football teaches.
“And as a magician, most of his shows are a celebration of something: somebody’s birthday, somebody’s Christmas party, somebody’s wedding.
“People are celebrating a special occasion and he likes to be a part of it and bring them joy and make it better for them.”
‘Fell in love with magic’
Growing up in Mansfield, Pearce said he was about 8 when the late Harry Blackstone Jr. — the famed magician who is said to have pulled over 80,000 rabbits out of his sleeves and hat — appeared at the historic 1,400-seat Renaissance Theater in town.
“He called a bunch of us kids up on stage with him and I had my hands on the side of the canary cage with the canary in it. Maybe 10 of us were holding onto it.
“And then: Boom!
“It was gone!
“Right then, I fell in love with magic.”
He got a little magic kit, but said he didn’t have a trick that stood out until he went to the American Legion-sponsored Buckeye Boys State camp in 1987, the summer before his senior year in high school:
“I hit it off with one kid there and he taught me a card trick. I call it ‘The Joe Trick.’ It’s a story that uses every card in the deck.
“Right after camp I lost track of the other kid, but I still remember his trick. In fact, I still use it today. It’s that good.”
And yet, back then, he wasn’t thinking about being a magician.
His dad had been a sports legend at his high school — earning 11 varsity letters — and Bret hoped for a little football fame himself: “All I ever wanted to do was play high school football. I didn’t have dreams bigger than that.”
He did play at Madison, but decided to go to Ohio State as a student rather than play football at a small college.
But once at OSU, he realized how much he missed football. He transferred to Ohio University, was an education major and ended up doing his student teaching at Wahama High School in the small Ohio River town of Mason, West Virginia.
That’s where he started coaching football.
After that he ended up at West Carrollton High School, where he spent six seasons as an assistant.
By then Michelle, who’d been his high school sweetheart, was in grad school at the University of Cincinnati.
That’s what got him to Norwood, where he discovered Haines House of Cards, a magic shop that held him spellbound.
“That’s where I fell in love with magic again,” he said.
He started to buy magic books and tricks and would go home and practice until he learned them.
These days he practices in the garage, sometimes videos himself to study each trick, and when he’s ready, he often shows his efforts to Michelle for a bit of audience feedback.
“In 1996, someone asked me to work their daughter’s wedding reception,” he said. “Just to go table to table and entertain people, especially when the wedding party was first getting their pictures taken and everybody would be getting fidgety waiting.
“And then they gave me money for doing it and I thought, ‘This is pretty cool!’”
He said he started to “really get into it” and he joined the International Brotherhood of Magicians, a Kettering club that meets once a month.
By 2000, he was part of the Milton Union staff and soon he was the head coach. But 13 years into that successful tenure, he gave up the job so he could spend time watching his own two children in their activities at Northmont High. His older son swam and was in the marching band, as was his younger son and that got him to football games on Friday nights
“He was trying to be a good dad and a good husband, but you could tell something was missing,” Michelle said. “Football is in his blood.”
“I knew I was going to miss coaching the kids, but I also knew stepping away was the right thing to do,” Pearce said. “I was missing my own children doing their things and that was just more important to me.”
When his kids could drive, he returned to the Bulldogs sideline as the offensive coordinator on Mark Lane’s staff. And when Lane moved full-time to the athletic director’s job, Pearce was asked to be the head coach again.
It’s a job he loves:
“I like the connection with the kids. Boys come in at 13 or 14 years old and they leave the program as young men and you get to see the change in them.”
He talked about the lessons of football: “Responsibility. Overcoming adversity. When you line up against somebody who is going to kick your butt every play in front of the whole town and you still fight for 48 minutes, that teaches you something,”
The tutorials haven’t been lost on the Bulldogs, who were 10-2 last season and won the inaugural Three Rivers Conference crown. They have registered four shutouts in eight games and have outscored the opposition 346-40.
No matter the dominance of his son’s team, Joe Pearce still gets so nervous he can’t eat after 10 a.m. on game days.
And yet he’s glad Bret has returned from his hiatus and he’s again making the weekly trips from Mansfield.
The only group that’s happier about the return to his Friday night routine is the waterfowl of Richland County.
“Those years he wasn’t coaching,” Joe said with a laugh, “I went duck hunting.”
Credit: Mia's Photos
Credit: Mia's Photos
Talented players
It was First Responders Night at Memorial Stadium on Friday.
When the MU players entered the field through the open mouth and big, white canine teeth of the huge inflatable Bulldog head beyond the end zone, they wore stars and stripes spats over their football shoes.
On the front of their red helmets — which have a studded dog collar logo on one side and dog bone stickers pasted on the back to signify big plays and contributions — were large decals honoring the fire department, police and EMS workers.
Several first responders were honored on the field before the game and some of their vehicles — from West Milton police, the Miami County Sheriff, Laura Fire Department, Five Rivers Metro Parks, Union Township Life Squad — were lined up beyond the end zone. Every time the Bulldogs scored, the responders flipped on the flashing light bars atop their vehicles.
By the end of the first half — the Bulldogs scored all 47 points in the first two quarters and then the backups came in — you had seen a nonstop light show.
Milton-Union has had good teams before and two made it to the regional finals. The 2006 team lost to Oak Harbor and the 2012 team fell to Clinton Massie.
The program has had notable players as well: Carl Brumbaugh’s Chicago Bears’ teams twice won NFL titles. Charlie Green, who starred at Wittenberg and played for the Oakland Raiders, is in the College Football Hall of Fame. Mike Kelly was the highly successful University of Dayton coach and Wes Martin is now a guard for the Washington Commanders.
Rarely does a school the size of Milton-Union — it’s Division V this season after being one of the smallest in Division IV last year — have so many talented football players.
Blake Brumbaugh, defensive lineman Jake Brown and kicker Mason Grudich were first team all-state a year ago and offensive lineman Ethan Lane was third team. Add in 6-foot-4 wide receiver Cooper Brown and quarterback Nate Morter, who is second all-time on the MU’s career passing list, and you see why the Bulldogs have won 16 straight regular season games.
Friday night six players scored and running back Michael Elam ran for two touchdowns.
“This year feels special in many ways,” Brumbaugh said. “A lot of us have been playing together since sixth grade. It’s pretty surreal to be with all your best friends and (pull off) big wins every week.”
The Bulldogs have two tough games left in the regular season. Next week they travel to 7-1 Northridge and then they host 6-2 Riverside.
After that comes the playoffs.
This is also the time IncrediBret starts getting requests at bret_pearce@yahoo.com to perform at holiday parties from Thanksgiving through Christmas.
“I’m hoping I won’t be doing any of those until after the first weekend of December,” Pearce said with a smile and a nod to the state championships at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton that first weekend.
And if that’s how it plays out, then, finally, he may admit that — red vest and Rubik’s trick aside — this certainly was a magical season for Bulldogs football.
About the Author