MADISON -He stands at the front of the Daniel Hand football team. He has been chosen to lead them onto Strong Field this Friday night at the Surf Club.
No. 60, junior Noah White, a first-year player just seeing his first varsity minutes on the defensive line.
He's earned them, coach Erik Becker says. Noah White shows up every day and he brings it.
"And if you show up every day and if you bring it, you're one of us," Becker states. "No matter how big you are or how fast you are, all that is irrelevant. It's about heart. It's about becoming a part of something bigger than yourself."
And what is bigger than life itself? The Hand football team has been repeatedly reminded these past two weeks in ways heartbreaking, hopeful and miraculous.
Tony Reno, who established extensive ties to Madison while coaching the Yale football team, died last Friday at age 52.
Mike Ciotti, the 59-year-old native son who played and coached at Hand, the son of team founder Larry Ciotti, is back at the Surf Club this Friday night with the visiting Cheshire Rams, a member of their staff, still coaching while battling Stage 4 cancer.
Ciotti will be honored during the coin toss and again at halftime once Noah White leads the home team onto the field. Noah holds the American flag in his hands. The same hands he pressed down upon his father's chest a mere 10 days before, administering the CPR that kept him from dying on their kitchen floor of a heart attack that came out of nowhere.
In Becker's mind, it was an act of pure heroism.
Becker's mind also can't help but cast back to another season of Daniel Hand football - 1995, when another father was stricken, but did not pull through. George Becker, gone at 48. His son Erik was 17, and the support he needed to go on he found with the Hand football team.
Noah White now leads the 2026 band of Tigers onto Strong Field. He waves the flag with a vigor that does not waver until he puts it down. It's not just another Friday night at the Surf Club.
Put yourself there. Put yourself in the young man's shoes. Noah White, just home from practice. Showered, but famished, tired and bruised.
Just Noah and his dad John in the kitchen. Trisha, the wife and mom, is out at dance class with Noah's younger sisters, freshman Grace and sixth-grade Emma.
John has just come inside from wiping down the passenger side of the car. A 16-year-old boy can work up a serious sweat at football practice.
Noah and John have logged many miles together. They share a love of the New York Giants and Boston Red Sox, of fishing at the summer house in Westbrook.
Then there are the comic books. John may be 50-years old, but he savors them as much as his teenage son. Marvel all the way: Spiderman for Noah, X-Men and the original Secret Wars for John. Comics & Coffee in Deep River and Sarge's Comics & Games in New London are the go-to spots.
Maybe some Saturday soon. For now, it's a quiet Tuesday night on Harkness Drive in North Madison. The girls will be home soon. Noah is getting lulled into TikTok videos on his I-phone. John, too, is glancing at his phone.
And then he puts it down. And he exclaims "Oh, my God!" A hand flies to his chest. And he just drops.
Just as fast, with that phone in his hand, Noah calls 911. But he's not going to sit around and wait for emergency responders to show.
"He's my dad, the most important man in my life," Noah will later explain. "I can't let him go like that. I had to do something. I couldn't just let him ..."
Noah finds John unconscious, lying on his side between the kitchen island and the cabinets. He's mumbling. Is it a seizure?
"It never crossed my mind about heart attack because he's healthy, no heart trouble. I didn't really know what it was. I just knew I had to try to do my best to help him."
Noah turns his father onto his back and pulls him away from the kitchen island. His breathing is shallow. Then it stops all together.
"So I had to start."
Noah is scared, extremely scared. But he's been trained. A Sea Cadet who goes to activities one weekend every month at the naval submarine base in Groton, he's had multiple courses in CPR. He even taught the most recent one.
This is why, in a moment in which it is human nature to freeze or panic, muscle memory kicks in.
"It was like a light flicked on. I wasn't worried about anything else but trying to keep him alive until the paramedics arrived. They came fast, but for me it felt like hours. It was the longest three minutes I will probably ever have."
Noah applies compressions, on the four-count. On the very first one, he feels one of his father's ribs break.
John also gasps, a strange, frightening breath. But he is breathing. Noah continues with the compressions. He knows he can't stop. Is that another rib breaking? It is the longest three minutes.
"I was doing them as hard as a I could, because I knew if I didn't do them hard he would have died."
Doctors make that quite clear in the days to come. Noah saved his father life, brought him back and bought time for EMTs to arrive. They work on John for a good half hour on the kitchen floor until they gain a heartbeat steady enough to transport him to Yale New Haven Hospital.
Five days later, when his breathing tube is removed and he can speak, John looks at his son and says, "You broke all my @#$& ribs, @#$$!"
And then John says, "You saved my life."
He says it again and again. "You saved my life."
There are hugs, tears, and there is a new favorite super-hero.
Even after running a battery of tests, doctors can't pinpoint what brought on a heart attack in an apparently healthy man with no history of heart problems.
Was it a condition that deteriorated until his heart just gave out? A virus? Noah and sisters will undergo tests to see if there's something congenital and start treating it now. John will have a defibrillator implanted.
"We may never find out the why, but hopefully the medication continues to work and the defibrillator will be there in case, if and when, this happens again," Trisha said.
John is expected to make a full recovery. He was up and walking on Thursday, the day before Noah led the Hand Tigers onto Strong Field to face the Cheshire Rams. John was bummed Friday. He wanted to be there.
Ironically, John and Trisha never wanted Noah to play football. John played growing up in Bristol. His career ended with an injury.
So Noah played baseball, but also had football in the back of his mind. This year, his parents acceded to his wishes thanks to the intercession of John's cousin, Mark Blencato, who coached football at New Britain.
Noah started showing up at Hand's winter weightlifting sessions. He went with the team to summer camps. As Coach Becker says, Noah showed up every day and he brought it.
Noah also showed up for a team function after practice last Wednesday, the day after he saved his father's life. He said he found he just needed to get out of the house.
Trisha can understand. Once Noah called her after the ambulance arrived, once she made the 15-minute drive home from dance class in about five minutes, once she got into the kitchen where the EMTs were working to stabilize John, Trisha's mind flew to her son. How was he going to emotionally handle the event and its aftermath?
"I was scared for him to see what he was seeing," she said. "He's 16. Can he wrap his brain around it? Not really, but through his training he had the ability and the composure to do it. Then he's got people like this team that have rallied around him and his every need."
Becker can understand. Senior year, he was in class when he was summoned by his football coach, Steve Filippone. Becker's father George, suffering from aplastic anemia, was gravely ill at Yale New Haven.
Filippone brought Becker home. Erik's mother was on the phone with the hospital. You need to come right away. The family readied to leave. The phone rang again.
"[George] was very young; it was very sad," Filippone recalled.
"I got to spend time with Erik," Filippone continued. "He was strong, faithful, didn't panic. But it was devastating. I just stayed with him as long as I could. I remember sitting in his room, him laying on the floor, just talking. It was a profound experience for both of us and it created a bond that's lasted."
Becker is straight-forward. The experiences of that season, he said, have led to where he stands today.
"This team lifted me up, encapsulated me with their love, protected me. Coach Filippone became my father figure and this team got me through that hard time," Becker said. "This team saved my life. This program took on a significance way more than just sports.
"Largely the reason why I'm doing the work I'm doing is because of an experience like what Noah had. Thank God his dad's going to live."
Becker reiterates Noah's ability to act in the moment, how he was shaped by his CPR training. And perhaps by football, too. Becker quotes the late Tony Reno: Event plus response equals outcome.
"We talk a lot about not becoming overcome by events, not flinching. Essentially, football's practice for real life," Becker said. "We don't control the events of life. People die; people have heart attacks. What's our response? Noah White responded with incredible skill and discipline in a huge moment, and because of that his dad's alive today."
Noah is a hero in so many eyes, and yet a brooding hero. He confesses to a swirl of emotions - relief, sadness, anger, even guilt.
"I don't know how to explain the guilt. It's just kind of sitting in my chest," Noah said. "It's hard to explain. I know I didn't do anything wrong. It's just a lump of everything that's still there."
John will have defibrillator, yet Noah worries about him coming home. What if it happens again? What if it happens and he's not home?
"What if my sisters are there? What if my youngest sister is there? She doesn't know how to use his phone. They're definitely doing better than I am, I would say. I'm glad they did not have to see what I saw and hear what I heard."
Noah is haunted by the sounds - the first rib breaking on the first compression, the first strange, raspy breath as John revived. Noah must keep the television on to fall asleep.
He talks openly about it all.
"It's definitely better to talk about it than keep it all balled up," Noah said. "I don't mind getting it out one on one, but if I'm around a group of people I don't like to share."
"It's a lot," his mother says. "He was brave. He was actually calm during the whole thing. I'm proud, humbled, honored to have him as my kid. People always say their kid can do no wrong. In my eyes, he really can't now."
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This article originally published at After saving his father, this Connecticut teen found support from his football family.