Football star takes special needs student to senior prom and couple named king and queen
Cecil Bratton will spend the 2013 football season lining up along the defensive line for Missouri State. For now, he’s still the big man on campus at St. Joseph (Mo.) Central High, and he’s making sure to take advantage of that status to do a few more good deeds before he picks up a diploma.
Now, Bratton’s most recent act of kindness has earned him major attention, after Bratton accepted an invitation to his senior prom from a special needs student, and the pair was voted as Central’s prom king and queen.
As reported by the St. Joseph News-Press, Bratton took 4-foot Breyonna Nelson to the pair’s senior prom after another special needs student rejected Nelson’s request to go to the dance. Rather than be daunted, Nelson walked right up to Bratton, a 6-foot-3, 280-pound football star who she had met as a junior. Nelson, who has bright pink hair, flipped the script and asked Bratton to the prom, and he immediately accepted.
“I said I'd be honored. I said it right away,” Cecil told the News-Press.
Bratton’s decision was a touching one that made sense for a number of reasons. Because the senior’s girlfriend is only a sophomore, she is not eligible to attend his prom, leaving him open to another date.
And while Bratton could have taken someone else, he said that if he hadn’t agreed to escort Nelson, he almost certainly would have spent the dance hanging out with his friends.
As for matching up such an odd-couple, the personal helper who looks after Nelson at Central High said that she felt the duo was a perfect pair.
“He sets such a good example, and I love Breyonna," Dianne Slawson told the News-Press. "She's got the guts of a bear.”
Now she’s a prom queen alongside a fellow student who is nearly the size of a bear himself.
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