Editor’s Note: this is the first in a series of stories on incoming football recruits for both the Montana State and Montana football programs that will run throughout January and February at Skyline Sports.
Brody Grebe grew up doing a little bit of everything.
After opening eyes around the state of Montana at the state track meet in the spring of his senior year, Grebe had plenty of options. The four-sport standout had to prove to himself he loved football if that was the path he wanted to take collegiately.
By the time he won three events and placed in five at the Class C state track meet, the native of Melstone had received an array of interest from college football and basketball programs around the state and around the country. The exceptional student fielded football offers from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, UMass, Cornell and Army.
He also had the attention of Montana and Montana State since by his sophomore year in a high school career that saw him play football at Class B Roundup while participating in basketball and track for Class C Melstone.
Grebe stood out in everything he participated in. whether it was playing quarterback or point guard, throwing a shot put or long jumping, wrestling a steer or roping a calf. That’s right, Grebe was one of Montana’s most decorated prep rodeo cowboys, too.
Instead of taking his talents somewhere close to home or committing to a college or sport for the upcoming years, Grebe decided to move across the country. He ended up at Choate Rosemary Hall, a private college prep school of about 850 in Wallingford, Connecticut, the alma mater of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Jason Frazier, a person with no previous knowledge of Grebe but who fielded Grebe’s Gatorade Player of the Year applications, first gave Grebe the idea of taking an extra year at a prep school, preserving his college eligibility in the process.
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“I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do,” Grebe said. “I didn’t know if I wanted to play basketball. That was one of (Montana State and Montana’s) worries: I had never really settled down to play just one sport and they didn’t know exactly how much love I had for football and if I wanted to play basketball in college.
“I had football offers, I had basketball offers mostly in the NAIA, the Frontier Conference schools. For rodeo, I was talking to the Montana State and Montana coaches for rodeo as well. Eventually, I decided going to Choate out in Connecticut for one year was going to be the best decision for me.
“I needed to see if I could leave Montana, if I would like it living somewhere else and exactly what sport I was going to do in college and what I was going to be most happy doing.”
While on the East Coast, Grebe had the chance to see another part of the country and check out many of the Ivy League and potential regional suitors first hand. The unorthodox opportunity cost Grebe no college eligibility. It also affirmed for him football was the sport to play in college.
“After I got out there, I ended up loving the football part of it and decided that’s what I wanted to do for the next four years,” Grebe said. “
“I ended up signing to Bozeman and now I’m back home full time.”
Grebe is a mid-year “transfer” who will join Montana State later this month in preparation for the beginning of winter conditioning and the spring academic semester. It’s rare because he will have five seasons to play four seasons beginning in the fall of 2020 after signing with MSU on December 22 of last year.
The 6-foot-3, 220-pound Grebe is slated to play “Buck” outside linebacker/end for the Montana State defense eventually. But Choate said “you could also see him doing things like Travis Jonsen did for us, that Troy (Andersen) did as a Wildcat quarterback,” next season.
“We will use his talents in a variety of ways.”
The Bobcats first knew about Grebe after he came to a camp on the MSU campus in the summer before his junior year. Choate and his staff could see Grebe’s upside right away. They wanted to know he was dedicated to the grind that is college football.
“We recruited him, hard,” Choate said at a press conference the day the new early signing period opened. “We had him at a bunch of camps, which helped in the recruiting process. His dad was his high school basketball coach and there was a time when our basketball coaches were looking seriously at this young man. He had a lot of opportunities basketball-wise.
“What Brody needed to figure out was, ‘Do I love football, do I want to play it at the next level? And am I good enough to do that?”
As a senior at Roundup High, Grebe played quarterback and linebacker, leading his squad to a 10-1 finish that included a win over Cut Bank in the first round of the Class B playoffs. He rushed for 1,441 yards and accounted for 31 total touchdowns to go with 95 tackles and a pair of interceptions. MSU came to the table with a partial scholarship, Choate said.
As a senior playing basketball for his father, Jason Grebe, Brody averaged more than 28 points per game. He became one of 31 boys’ basketball players in state history to surpass 2,000 career points. He hit 10 3-pointers and scored 50 points against Broadus. And he finished as one of just two players in Treasure State history with more than 2,500 points in his career. The Montana boys career scoring record is 2,763 points, set by Highwood’s Reece Gliko from 1990 to 1993.
Former Montana State head men’s basketball coach Brian Fish and current MSU head men’s basketball coach Danny Sprinkle expressed interest in Grebe to play hoops for the Bobcats.
In the spring of 2019, Grebe might’ve saved his best for last to cap his high school career. He wins state in the shot put (51-05¾), long jump (21-8½) and triple jump (45-6¾). He ran 11.15 seconds in the 100 meters to take second. He had the top qualifying time in the 200 meters (22.82) but false started in the finals, barely missing out on a fourth gold medal.
Choate and his staff kept tabs on Grebe while he was at Choate, too.
“We offered him a partial scholarship in high school and he was like, ‘I think I want to see if I can get myself a little bit more,” Choate said. “He did have some very serious interest toward the end of this last season. He really came on the last half of his prep school season.
“We watched the first half of his film and it looked pretty
similar to what he did in high school. I just kept saying, ‘Let’s watch him
again, let’s watch him again’ because I really love this kid.
“He’s what Montana State is all about. He’s a high academic kid, has a little
cowboy in him, hard working kid, blue collar. So I went back and watched the
second half of his prep school and there was no doubt this guy was a full
scholarship kid.”
Grebe has been sacrificing time and energy to chase his sports dreams already in his young life. His family’s ranch is located about 25 miles outside of Melstone, which is about 35 miles from Roundup. Grebe would drive 60 miles one way for football practice and games almost every single day in the fall while also participating in rodeo.
He played basketball for his dad while the spring brought track season, more rodeo and sometimes even travel basketball. He eventually had to give up rodeo his senior year after advancing to the high school national finals in calf roping as a sophomore and in steer wrestling as a junior.
Sharing his rancher roots and cowboy experiences with his teammates and classmates at Choate Rosemary helped Grebe grow and find clarity.
“It was definitely a culture shock,” Grebe said with a laugh. “Going out there, never really being away from Montana a whole lot, finding out my true self was the main thing. I learned the culture out there and also teaching them about my culture.
“A lot of my friends out there were just blown away when I would tell them some of the stuff we did growing up. Having friends who grew up in downtown Manhattan in apartments that are multimillion dollars was something new. It’s incredible to see different walks of life in school and in football.”
As the old saying goes, you have to leave if you want to come home. Grebe has only been gone from Montana for a matter of months. But the learning he’s done since leaving Musselshell County for the East Coast has helped him find the path he wants to walk for his future.
“It mostly came down to the love of Montana, being able to come home and be able to play in front of my family and friends and home state,” Grebe said of signing with Montana State. “There’s nothing like it. When I tell people about Montana, it’s a small community, the whole state. It’s a big area but it’s a tight-knit community and everybody is going to have my back. That’s pretty special to me.”
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Photos courtesy of Grebe family. All rights reserved.
