After five years apart, the top scorer in Vanderbilt University's football history reunited Saturday with the football he kicked through the goalposts in 2008 to break the university's all-time record.
Former placekicker Bryant Hahnfeldt lost it in 2015 after he repeatedly failed to pay rent on a storage locker where he kept the ball and some of his other belongings. The storage company eventually sold the locker's contents.
On Saturday, Hahnfeldt met an 18-year-old outside a Tullahoma Applebee's who returned the ball to him.
"It was an unbelievable act of human kindness that means more to me than he really knows," Hahnfeldt, 33, told the Tennessean this week.
For Hahnfeldt, the ball's return represented a significant marker in his recovery from the drug addiction that cost him the keepsake in the first place.
Absolutely crushing it
Hahnfeldt won a football scholarship to Vanderbilt in 2004 after excelling at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, where he won a statewide high school placekicking trophy.
He set three goals for himself:
1. Start for the Commodores freshman year (he did);
2. Break the school's all-time scoring record, set by a placekicker in the late 1990s (he did); and
3. Earn a spot on an NFL team. (He didn't.)
Hahnfeldt broke the record on a warm night at Vanderbilt Stadium Sept. 13, 2008, in a game against Rice University. A 45-yarder from the right hash.
"I remember absolutely crushing it," he said with a smile. "The kick was just as pure as it gets. I remember turning to my holder, and it wasn’t even through the uprights and we’re slapping hands."
An equipment manager retrieved the ball, and the public address announcer told the crowd Hahnfeldt had become Vanderbilt football's all-time top scorer. Hahnfeldt still holds that title today.
Coaches had the ball painted with his name and details of the game and presented it to Hahnfeldt at an awards banquet later in the season.
Thirty Roxies and some drinks
Hahnfeldt finished the season on New Year's Eve 2008 by kicking a game-winning 45-yard field goal against Boston College at the Music City Bowl, giving Vanderbilt its first bowl victory since 1955.
That night, he celebrated with dinner, drinks and 30 "Roxies" — a type of opioid oxycodone pain pill — at Morton's steakhouse downtown
After that, Hahnfeldt got deeper and deeper into abusing pain pills his senior year in college. He didn't work out before NFL tryouts that spring and never played pro football.
Hahnfeldt worked in Nashville restaurants and even had a two-year stint as a graduate assistant coach at Mississippi State, where he helped mold Logan Cooke, now a punter with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Hahnfeldt occasionally detoxed off the pills, but could never shake them for longer than a month or two.
Wherever he went, though, Hahnfeldt proudly displayed his record-breaking football in his house or apartment.
In 2013, he started making great money as a server and bartender at J. Alexander's on White Bridge Road. "But I didn't have a penny to my name," he said.
Eventually, he was so broke that he rented a storage unit for $100 a month and moved back in with his mom. In 2015, he ignored the storage locker bills and got a notice a couple of months later that his stuff had been confiscated and would be sold.
By that point, he said, "I couldn’t have cared less. So what [the ball]'s gone?"
He cried when he got the message
Hahnfeldt moved out of his mom's house and lived in an apartment for two years. But then he got evicted.
"A sheriff deputy called my step dad and told him I had to have everything out by the next day. My mom rented a U-Haul, and it all hit the fan. I was cornered, I was done. But I was so thankful — the gig’s up."
Hahnfeldt's sobriety date is Feb. 22, 2017, the day after he got into 90 days of residential treatment in Dickson, Tenn.
Since then, he is active in recovery and is engaged to be married. He started a career selling brick and learned a lot about humility. At four months sober, one of his older brothers died from a drug overdose in their mom's house.
"This disease has hit our family as hard as it can hit a family," he said.
Hahnfeldt, with help from his recovery friends, stayed off drugs through that tragedy.
During his early years without drugs, Hahnfeldt often mentioned to his girlfriend that he wished he'd still had that football.
The Instagram message came last Tuesday.
"Hi I'm Peyton... I've got your football... I was wounding (sic) if you'd like it back we fount (sic) it in a storage unit"
Hahnfeldt cried when he read it.
Turns out Peyton is an 18-year-old who's friends with another teen whose grandmother bought the storage unit contents. The grandmother knew Peyton was a Vanderbilt fan.
Peyton said later he'd tried for a couple of years to return the football, but couldn't connect with Hahnfeldt for most of that time.
The two finally met outside the Tullahoma Applebee's where the former Vanderbilt star hugged the teen who was holding his beloved football.
Hahnfeldt brought the teen a game-worn Vanderbilt jersey and some other Commodores gear.
"The ball is more than just breaking the record. It symbolizes a lot more to me than that — I’m sober, I’m doing the right thing, I’m on the right track on life," he said.
"It’s also a constant reminder of how quickly I can lose everything.
"Getting that ball back, though? It's a God moment if ever there was a God moment."
Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.
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