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Brian Bruno has a problem: How is he supposed to keep his squad hungry, when no rostered player has ever experienced a loss in their varsity careers at Christian Brothers Academy?

Sure, there have been close calls, last-second Hail Mary passes and one-point games. But in the last three years, they’ve never had that feeling of sitting on the bus home, in silence, stewing in the bitter taste of defeat.

“You have to make players understand that we’ve become the mountain,” Bruno said. “(Football is like) you’re climbing a mountain. At some point, you become the mountain, and everybody’s trying to climb to you.”

It’s hard to argue with the defensive coordinator’s assessment. After its 2025 state championship win over Saratoga Springs — its third consecutive state title — CBA-Syracuse is firmly at the peak of New York high school football. The Brothers have won 41 consecutive games and are the first team in NYSPHSAA history to achieve a three-peat in Class AA, the highest tier of New York football.

CBA-Syracuse now has the same number of undefeated seasons (three) and state championships (four) as losses (seven), since 2020. In that timeframe, the Brothers outscored their opponents 2,749-964, nearly tripling their competitors’ output each game.

But despite their current success, the Brothers haven’t always had the pressure of being the paragon of New York high school football. Before 2020, they had the opposite problem. Though it returned, two 1-7 seasons yielded CBA-Syracuse’s demotion from Class AA to Class A.

Those failures shaped CBA-Syracuse’s approach to football. It’s why scores and records don’t matter to head coach Casey Brown — all he cares about is whether his team gives 100% of its effort each day. It’s why, at the 2025 state final, defensive line coach Chris Achuff donned a shirt that read “Next Play.” And it’s why, just a week after winning state, the team was back in the weight room together.

“I don’t know the scores, my mindset is, ‘Today’s the most important day, because it’s today,’” Brown said. “We live in the moment, we live where our feet are. What we did yesterday, we want to be able to learn from.”

Brown’s team either wins or learns, he said.

Sometimes they do both at once, but they never lose. To Brown, a true loss doesn’t reside on the scoreboard — rather, it resides in a player or coach’s head, and comes when they give up.

Off the field, players carry the same mindset. They wear ties and dress shirts to class. The only time in the year they don’t train as a team is during finals week. Every player in the class of 2025 got accepted to a 4-year institution.

“I can’t make a kid feel a loss, but I can make them look up to what the people before them did,” Bruno said. “We have a lot of great success stories. We try to point to the guys who did it the right way.

“Our success isn’t always defined in wins and losses. It’s defined by how many kids we can get to college who maybe wouldn’t have without football.”

Zoey Grimes | Design Editor

• • •

Reality set in for Brown as he reevaluated his program in 2018. He was naive.

It was his fourth season as head coach, and his program was declining. Players weren’t lifting together. Worse, they’d stopped believing in Brown’s vision.

After taking the helm from his mentor, Lasallian Hall of Famer Joe Casamento, Brown’s second season ended with sectional hardware and a deep playoff run to the 2016 state semifinals, led by juniors SirVocea Dennis and Stevie Scott. When both got injured the next season, nobody stepped up. The Brothers didn’t qualify for the sectional playoffs.

Brown realized that all of his success had come with Casamento’s leftovers. When a roadblock approached, his players looked for Casamento.

“You are never going to be able to fill the shoes of the man before you. I’m never going to be Coach Caz,” Brown said. “I had to find myself, I had to find what I was going to be.”

Brown emphasized development at the junior high and JV levels. Instead of moving younger players up as soon as he felt they could compete at the varsity level, he kept them with their age groups to build solid grassroots teams. While the varsity squad went 1-7 in both 2018 and 2019, the JV teams had winning records.

“When those JV kids who were used to winning came up, that was all they knew,” offensive coordinator Bruce Williams said. “Jordan Rae, Amarri Pitts and Syair Torrence had a different mindset.”

The changes made in 2018 and 2019 set the gears in motion for the 2020s. When the school’s facilities were closed due to COVID-19, players trained in Williams’ basement with masks on. With no fall season, they organized 7-on-7 games together.

Perhaps the most impactful change in the staff’s rhetoric was one Williams suggested, inspired from his own time at CBA-Syracuse. Williams led the 2004 state championship-winning team in receiving yards, and he recalled his quarterback, Greg Paulus, routinely hugging his teammates and showing them he cared about them.

The CBA-Syracuse staff wanted their program to have that same sense of unity. So, they showed it.

Brown hugs every coach when he gets to practice. If he has a difficult conversation with a player, he begins it by reminding them he cares about them.

Bruno still employs around 12-14 players each summer at his restaurant, catering and vending repair businesses, he said. He’s even taught some how to cook.

“It’s not the Xs and Os that matter,” Brown said. “It’s how they’ve learned to care about each other and support each other through games, through family situations, through tough classes, through breakups. These guys know how to support each other and lift each other up.

• • •

With less than 80 seconds left in the 2021 Class A state championship, the Brothers’ sideline was a mess.

CBA-Syracuse had just given up a touchdown, and Somers, down 32-31, readied for a two-point conversion to flip the score in its favor. As Brown and his staff scrambled to organize their players, junior defensive back Dan Anderson turned to his closest teammate and spoke up.

“I love you,” Anderson said. “I’m not gonna let you down.”

Then another player turned to his teammate, following in Anderson’s lead. Soon enough, it’d become a full-on chain of players turning to the person next to them and sharing the same message.

“Everybody came together,” Pitts said. “Everybody knew that we had each other’s backs. We all felt the energy and embraced it. We just had to let each other know.”

It was the in-game manifestation of Brown’s emphasis on “playing for each other.” For Pitts, it was a reminder the team’s support remained constant at the end of an otherwise chaotic season.

Despite starting the 2021 season with three straight wins, CBA-Syracuse was blown out in its next two games. The Brothers lost 51-30 at Indian River, before being shut out 21-0 in their last regular season home game against West Genesee. The loss broke them.

“It hurt because we had seniors who had been through the dog days,” Pitts said. “Now we were fighting for something, and the season was spiraling downward.”

Players pointed fingers on the sideline. And the team, who always went out to eat together after each game, went straight home.

“There was a divide in the team,” Rae said. “When you lose, it’s bound to happen. Me and a few other leaders had to get everybody’s minds straight, on how we’re all together in this.”

Brown made defensive adjustments. Although the Brothers lost their final regular-season matchup by five, their .500 record was enough to secure a playoff berth. They then rattled off wins over several top teams through the playoffs.

The team rallied around the phrase, “Charlie Mike,” a military term meaning “Continue Mission.” Brown got it from a former student-athlete of his who served on SEAL Team Two.

“Something would happen, and I’d just hear, ‘Charlie Mike, Charlie Mike, Charlie Mike,’” Brown said. “They just believed in each other, all the way up to the last play in the state championship.”

Sophomore Jason Brunson intercepted Somers’ quarterback Matt Fitzsimmons’ pass on that two-point conversion. Mission complete. The first team Brown had fully developed sealed his first championship.

CBA quarterback Gradyn Dixon avoids a tackler in the Brothers’ state championship win over Saratoga Springs Dec. 6, 2025. The win completed CBA’s three-peat as Class AA state champions. Peter Radosh | Asst. Copy Editor

• • •

Javon Edenfield still felt the Brothers had something to prove, even though he’d spent two years with them at the summit of New York high school football.

In 2023, the two-way wide receiver and linebacker was pulled up from JV as a freshman, and watched from the sideline as CBA-Syracuse averaged 33-point wins during its 14-0 run to their second state title of the decade.

The next year, he was in the end zone when Darien Williams caught a last-second Hail Mary to win the 2024 championship. It was the No. 1 play on ESPN’s SportsCenter that week.

Local eyes were now on the Brothers.

Two weeks into the season, the team faced their first test. Dubbed the second-ever “Battle of the Brothers,” CBA-Syracuse faced their Lasallian brethren CBA-Albany in a rematch of the 2024 state championship.

The locker room was silent before the game.

“We were itching to hit somebody,” Edenfield said. “We all wanted to make a statement of why we’re the best in the state, why we’re the big brother. We blew them up.”

Junior quarterback Gradyn Dixon passed for two touchdowns, three separate players logged ground scores and Edenfield had a pick-6 in the 42-9 win.

The season’s only hiccup was against Cicero-North Syracuse in their last regular season game. The team went in with a weak mindset, defensive lineman Mac Andrews said. Focused on the playoffs, the team overlooked the game in front of them.

The Brothers lacked their usual energy, and failed to reach the end zone in the first half. They barely escaped with a 21-20 win after a blocked field goal attempt on the game’s final play. Dixon watched from the sideline; the game was a reminder of why Brown stresses his players “live in the moment.”

“It’s hard not to think about what’s on the line as far as undefeated records from past teams,” Dixon said. “I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a thought, but we always try to focus on the task in front of us.”

Against Cicero-North, the Brothers weren’t. With a new task ahead — the playoffs — they refused to let such a close game happen again.

They lived up to that promise. On their run to the JMA Wireless Dome, the Brothers defeated their opponents by an average of 31 points.

By the time he stood in the SU locker room, readying his team for the 2025 state championship, all Brown had to do was echo the sentiment he’d built his program around seven years ago. He recited the same words his players had heard since they were seventh graders.

“Take this opportunity today. Nothing is given. You gotta work to get what you get to,” Brown told them. “Rent’s due, if you want a payday, you have to get to work today. Put on your hard helmet, bring your hammer, pack your lunch. It’s time to go to work.”

Published on January 29, 2026 at 1:50 am
Contact Peter: phradosh@syr.edu