Hello, Cubs; farewell, Sophie — big confluence straight ahead for Brunner family

by Adnan Alam

By RYAN CLARKE
Cronkite News

TEMPE — The last weekend of February has all the makings of perfection for the Brunners: family, basketball and the Chicago Cubs.

Sophie Brunner’s final regular-season games at ASU will come on the same weekend (Feb. 24-26) that the world champion Chicago Cubs start spring training in Mesa. The Brunners are going to be there for both, cheering loudly at the sporting events that bond their family.

“We’re just proud of (Sophie) and what she’s accomplished in basketball,” Sophie’s father, Tom Brunner, said in a phone interview. “And it’s definitely a family-oriented thing with the Chicago Cubs.”

Family-oriented is an understatement. The Brunners live and breathe Cubs baseball. Never before had that breath been more exerted than last fall, when the Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years.

“We’ve been waiting,” Tom Brunner said. “I didn’t think it would ever happen, but we sure have been waiting.”

Much of that waiting included watching Sophie grow into an elite basketball player in Freeport, Illinois, about 110 miles northwest of Wrigley Field. While the Cubs broke the Brunners’ hearts year after year, Sophie filled them back up with her stellar play and passion for basketball.

Her father said she’d watch basketball all day on TV, then go out in the front yard and try to emulate what she saw. Sophie’s dedication paid off when she earned a full-ride scholarship to play for coach Charli Turner Thorne at Arizona State.

And now, in her senior year, the 6-foot-1 forward is the Sun Devils’ best player and, entering Friday night’s game at Arizona, leads the team in scoring and rebounding.

The Cubs provide Brunner an escape from the grind of basketball. Last fall, that escape provided inspiration.

Sophie, along with 40 million other TV viewers, watched the Cubs beat the Indians in Game 7 of World Series.

“My other friends were in Wrigleyville back home, some of them were at the game, and I was in my apartment with Kelsey (Moos) and a couple of our teammates,” she said. “I remember when they won I just went crazy.”

Moos said: “She was more shocked than anything.”

Sophie’s apartment sits right down the street from Sloan Park, the Cubs’ spring-training home in Mesa. When they won it all, she joined in the elation of hundreds of Cubs fans that gathered at Sloan Park — an experience she said she’d never forget.

Witnessing a moment as historic and significant as the 2016 World Series transcends Sophie’s fandom.

“It just shows that anything is possible when you stick together,” she said. “It’s moments like that where you get goosebumps and enjoy that historic moment.

“It makes you realize that anything can happen.”

Sophie’s grandmother — a lifelong Cubs fan — passed away seven years ago. That took the World Series to another level for Sophie and her family. It made it, she said, “really special.”

“I think a lot of people were so emotional about it because they knew their family members who had passed away,” Sophie said. “The World Series just meant more — you grow up loving the Cubs, they had been terrible for so long and they finally did it.”

Sophie attended her first Cubs game at Wrigley Field when she was 10. With rain coming down, Tom Brunner watched as his daughters Sophie and Ellen stood waiting for autographs and pictures of players. Out of nowhere, a car pulled up, and someone inside rolled down the window.

It was Ron Santo.

The Cubs legend — who had moved from a glorious career at third base for the Cubs to become their beloved radio analyst _ allowed Sophie and Ellen to sit in his car, out of the rain, while they waited for the players. The moment cemented Sophie’s fandom.

From that rainy day at Wrigley to the 2016 World Series, Cubs baseball has always been a bonding force for the Brunners. Now, on Sophie’s senior weekend, they will see the Cubs for the first time as world champions.

“It’s gonna be fun,” Tom Brunner said. “We can’t wait.”