Football has paid off for Eagle Rock High’s Million Bossano
Lacking confidence as a 14-year-old freshman, Melion Bossano entered high school with one idea in mind.
“Just finish the four years,” he said.
In September 2022, while getting 30 minutes to try out for the Eagle Rock High basketball team, his confidence was shaken even more.
“They said if we text you, you make the team. I never got that message,” he said. “I was in denial. ‘Maybe they forgot me.’ And after the third or fourth week, I was [thinking]“Maybe they didn’t send that text.”
The rejection left him adrift, but then came the moment that changed his life. While holding a camera to film class, his JV football coach, Vince Vergara, noticed him, pulled him aside and asked, “Hey, do you want to play football?”
He joined the JV team as a sophomore. His mother had refused to let him play football years ago after she watched the movie “Concussion” in 2015. This time she told him: Be careful.
He started from scratch.
“I had to learn fast,” he said. “I didn’t know what running back was or nothing. I never played youth soccer, I never played flag.”
Last season as a junior, he entered the varsity and had 211 yards rushing and two touchdowns. This season, as a 5-foot-10, 195-pound senior, he has become so valuable that coach Andy Moran said he is the City Section’s best player, after he rushed for 824 yards and 13 touchdowns in the Northern League title game against Franklin on Friday.
“He doesn’t go down and everyone is ready to stop him and they didn’t,” Moran said.
He had 143 yards rushing against Granada Hills Kennedy, 108 yards against Monrovia, 146 yards against Bell, 141 yards against Marquez and 107 yards against Los Angeles Marshall.
His father was a Marine for 20 years and came here as a teenager from Belize. His mother is from the Philippines.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t go to either of them, but I would love to go,” he said.
His first name stands for “my lion”.
His father told him: “You are a lion, so you are fierce.”
With renewed confidence, Bossano discovered his love for football and his belief in his ability to continue improving through experience.
He even tried basketball again and made the team, then decided to focus on football.
“Try again, work harder, and make yourself a better person,” his father told him.
It’s all part of the high school experience — experimenting, exploring, and dealing with the positives and negatives that happen to everyone in the teenage years. His younger brother also worked on the football team.
“Now I’m blaming myself why I didn’t do this my freshman year,” Bossano said. “Now I appreciate the little things, about discipline, always do your job, never do someone else’s job. It helped me grow as a person. I was so ignorant and blind when I got into it. I felt like maybe I wouldn’t be the worst player but maybe I’d be a secondary player, but I got on the field and started. It was great.”
Soon he hopes to visit Belize or Manila to learn more about his parents’ home country.
“My father says my grandmother had a house where you could wake up and look out the window, and the beach would be there,” he said. “I want to visit both.”
He is a 17-year-old who sees a completely different world and a completely different future with the help of his football experiences.