Football
Favorite athlete: Larry Fitzgerald
Favorite team: Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Pick 6 in my freshman year’s district championship game
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Getting mossed by a North Penn wide receiver
Music on playlist: “One More Time”
Future plans: Attend college and play football
Words to live by: “You learn more from failure then from success.”
One goal before turning 30: Have a job that I enjoy doing.
One thing people don’t know about me: I like playing volleyball
By GORDON GLANTZ
To the outside observer, success in sports is only measured in wins and losses.
For participants, namely coaches and players, there is so much more to it.
While the Upper Dublin football program has enjoyed extended success under the guidance of coach Bret Stover, it is the many players who have sweated it out in the weight room and the hot August practice fields and all the way to the chilly late fall playoff games that have made it worthwhile.
For Stover, one such player was Chris Kohlbrenner, who has started since his freshman year and just finished a career of blood, sweat, tears and plenty of success, including two district titles.
“In my 33 years of coaching at Upper Dublin, he is probably one of my top five players of all time, and I told his parents that too after the (last) game,” Stover said after falling in the District 1 5A quarterfinals to eventual district champion Strath Haven 26-21.
“He’s the best,” the UD coach continued. “I only had one captain this year, and he was it. He is more of an ‘example’ guy, but he’s not afraid to give an earful to people, but only when it’s necessary. He had the tact to do it, without embarrassing someone. We are really going to miss him.”
As far as Kohlbrenner is concerned, he couldn’t have asked for a better coach for his journey.
“Not only has he been a great coach but a great mentor,” said Kohlbrenner. “He’s such a great leader for us.”
Back to the Beginning
Through his older brother, John - in a long history of Johns dangling from the family tree -- Kohlbrenner was somewhat of a known entity coming in as a freshman.
“He came up in our youth program,” said Stover. “I saw him play at Sandy Run Middle School. I also knew him because of his brother.”
It was because of his brother, who bounced him around a bit in backyard games growing up, that Kohlbrenner didn’t feel like a stranger in a strange land as a freshman.
“It helped a lot,” he explained. “I had good connections already with a lot of those guys. I knew them, and they knew me. It was really easy to bond with them.”
Mitigating circumstances put the freshman class for the 2020 season front and center.
“Chris was a four-year starter for us, which was unusual,” said Stover. “But, if you go back to that year, it was COVID and there was no freshman program, so we brought all of our freshmen up. He earned a starting spot as a freshman.”
Stover went on to explain that the decision was on former defensive coordinator Dave Sowers.
Said Stover: “Dave said, ‘We’re going to put Kohlbrenner back at safety.’ I said, ‘Hey, whatever. I trust you.’ We had some good pieces around him when he was a freshman, and they were able to kind of educate him and bring him along. He wasn’t the most vocal player back there as a freshman, but he was always in the right place. He had the clinching interception against West Chester Rustin his freshman year and ran it back for a touchdown.”
With his older brother serving as one of the escorts to the end zone, it was one of the absolute highlights of Kohlbrenner’s athletic career, which he hopes to extend to the collegiate level (mutual interest is from the FCS level to PSAC to Division III).
“That was one of the coolest experiences that I’ve ever had,” he said of the pick-six.
While he appreciated the confidence from the coaching staff, Kohlbrenner started to realize for himself that he could get the job done when the team practiced in live pre-season scrimmages.
Still, Sowers made sure to keep his head in the game.
“There were definitely a couple of times when I was a little bit timid, and Coach Sowers would yell at me for not opening my mouth and not communicating enough,” Kohlbrenner said. “As time went on, though, I became pretty good at it.”
The rest is history.
“He has been quarterbacking that back end of ours for four years now,” said Stover. “Last year, it was integral in what we did, considering how far we went (to the state semifinals), but I think he did an even better job this year. He wasn’t working with the talent pool that he was in the years prior. He was not only a player, but a teacher. It was so much fun to watch.”
Marathon Man
While Stover knew he could have automatically deployed an athlete like Kohlbrenner on the offensive side of the ball as a freshman, he waited until his sophomore year and began using him as a slot receiver.
It was a bit of new look for him, as he was a running back growing up, but soon realized that the slot worked for a guy his size (5-10, 170), and he embraced the challenge.
“I always used to play both ways,” said Kohlbrenner. “After I got to high school, I realized that wide receiver is a better fit for me, because I was a little bit smaller and not as powerful as some of those power backs. I made the adjustment my sophomore year to switch to wide receiver. Ever since then, I just got better and better at it.”
Fast forward to the recently completed senior season, and Kohlbrenner was a marked man.
“This year, we kind of moved him all over the place,” said Stover. “Teams were trying to take him away. We kind of made him into ‘Waldo.’ We wanted to make other defenses find him. It was, like, ‘You’re going to have to find No. 4 if you want to stop us.’”
Because of attrition, Kohlbrenner was needed to move around on the defensive side of the ball, moving from his comfort zone of free safety.
“He kind of did it all, and you did not have to tell him much,” said Stover. “He could move up and do it. He’s just a football player at the end of the day.”
Life Lessons
The story behind the story is that Kohlbrenner played much of his career as a 60-minute man with painful cramping issues.
It was a mystery wrapped up in a riddle, as he went for two blood tests and tried all the measures to stay hydrated.
It took independent research from his mother, Maryann, to solve the problem.
“My mom did a lot of research on figuring out how to help,” Kohlbrenner said. “She fixed it toward the end of the year this year, and I was finally able to play without cramps.
“It was really frustrating to me. I tried everything, and nothing worked. Then, about halfway into this season, my mom said to try staying out at halftime, running up and down the field. Ever since then, it kind of fixed my cramping problems.”
Her help fit an overall pattern from his parents, Maryann and John (not to be confused with his brother of the same name).
“My parents were great in supporting me in whatever I did,” said Kohlbrenner. “They were always getting me the right equipment and getting me to camps.”
The solution to the cramping -- staying loose by running on the field at halftime -- was right on time, because Kohlbrenner was needed on the field (there were key games, like against PW in his sophomore year, where he had to miss key snaps).
Said Stover: “He knew going into this season that we weren’t going to be as loaded as we were. But this was his senior year and he understood that wasn’t just about him, but about the entire team getting better each week. We lost to (CB) West and North Penn, putting us at 1-2. Who knew where the season was going to go at that point? Chris and a few others --- guys like Nate Cairnes, 1,700-yard running back Shyne Roberts and Trey Relvas – really brought us along.”
Although he plays both basketball and lacrosse where he uses his speed to burn to his advantage, there is no doubt that football is Kohlbrenner’s calling.
He sees players like Britain Covey on the Eagles, his favorite team, and knows it is not just a sport for monsters.
“It’s always cool to see guys like that, who are not depending just on their size,” said Kohlbrenner, who has topped out at 4.58 in the 40.
It was all these life lessons that he tried his best to relay to the younger squad this year as the sole captain.
“Transitioning into my senior year, I was still doing the work for myself, but I was also focused on the guys under me and building that depth and getting more guys ready,” said Kohlbrenner, who also wanted to extend appreciation to Sowers’ replacement, Ed Wall.
When this season ended in defeat against eventual district champion Strath Haven in a district quarterfinal game, Kohlbrenner made it clear that there were zero regrets.
“I’m very proud,” he said. “Not a lot of people thought we’d make it that far. The fact that we went out there against a much bigger and more experienced team and went toe-to-toe with them and even had a chance to win at the end, I was just very proud. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
A Leader off the Field
With a 3.1 GPA and a course load heavy in honors classes, Kohlbrenner doesn’t restrict his leadership to the gridiron and the locker room.
“I make sure to keep my academics up,” he said. “I make sure I keep on telling the other guys on the team to keep their grades up, too, so they don’t get put on academic probation and can play every game.
“It’s very important. Schools will come in and ask what your transcript is and everything like that. If you want to get into one of those schools, you have to keep your grades up.”
That means time management. As a three-sport athlete – four, counting some co-ed CYO volleyball “just for fun” – it is a juggling act that he actually relishes.
“I have a tighter schedule, so I fit everything in,” he said. “It’s better than just sitting back and saying, ‘Oh, I have a lot of time to relax.’ I tend to procrastinate and not get things done. I have something to keep me on track. I have practice until like 6-6:30. I just knock it out after I eat dinner.”
None of this comes as a surprise to Stover.
“He’s a great kid in the classroom,” said Stover. “He’s a great kid in the hallway. He’s just a great kid.”
