The Biakabutuka football pipeline met its end the day 9-year-old Jeremie Biakabutuka got a small concussion at football practice.
Jeremie, the oldest of four, set the tone for the rest of his siblings. Football may have been the family’s primary sport ever since Uncle Tim’s success as a standout running back at Michigan and the eighth overall draft pick in 1996 who had a six-year NFL career, but no more Biakabutuka kids would play football.
When it came time to sign Anthony, one of Jeremie’s younger brothers, up for football at age 10, Beya, his father, and Veronique, his mother, didn’t put pen to paper.
“I wanted to play football just to see what it was like,” Anthony Biakabutuka said. “I did other sports when I was young like soccer, basketball, everything. But I never got to try football.”
Anthony shrugged it off. By then, the family had found the next sport it planned to conquer: hockey. It had speed, skill and contact, and was safer than football. It also helped that the family lived in Quebec.
