Malvern Prep’s Cameron Brickle Jr. is a standout recruit who found football to be his safe haven

The mallet in his hand was Cameron Brickle Jr.’s disarming smile. It’s there hidden in pictures in the family’s home foyer, holding a baseball bat, or a basketball, or tucked inside a football helmet. It’s the reason why on the other side of the foyer sits a wicker basket overflowing with letters from every major college football program in the country.

No one knew what was behind the smile. Only he knew. Someone was going to feel his steam. He had it every day. He just hid it well. In time, he shaped it, made it into something wholesome and productive.

It’s what has led to Brickle, a 6-foot-3, 295-pound Malvern Prep junior, becoming one of the top defensive lineman in the country in the class of 2026. Ohio State, Texas, Penn State, Oklahoma, Oregon, Indiana, Alabama, Miami, and Michigan top the list among a mountain of college scholarship offers.

He needs special clothes for his 29-inch neck. Against constant double-teams — and triple-teams — this past season, he had 41 tackles, eight tackles for losses, and four sacks, and led the Inter-Academic League champion Friars in creating chaos on the field.

Some college scouts view him as a defensive end, others as a 3-technique. He has an explosive first step and heavy hands, and anyone he puts his hands on often moves backward. To put him in perspective for those unfamiliar with area high school football, Brickle is Eagles legend Jerome Brown, only in a slightly larger package.

Cam Brickle Sr. looks at the palm of his meaty right hand and gets teary-eyed. He knows the odyssey his son took to arrive to this point, because he came close to not being here.

Born two months premature, weighing just 4 pounds, 2 ounces, the younger Brickle was given a 50% chance to live. His curled, tiny body would fit in the palm of his father’s hand. He was in the prenatal care unit for two months before he came home. He was so small his spaghetti-strand legs slipped through preemie diapers. The nurses used to wonder, his father recalls, how rare it was for a preemie to be able to eat, breathe, and hold his head up on his own.

“I was a mess, torn up, being there every day,” his father said with a sigh. “Cam is lucky to be alive, but he was always a fighter; he was always strong, even as a baby.”

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At 2, he was treated for what was thought to be an ear infection. Upon coming home, the elder Brickle remembers young Cam’s mother screaming from the back room. The child’s lips were turning blue. He was having trouble breathing. His father rushed him to Einstein Medical Center, where he was diagnosed with double pneumonia from 80% of his lungs being filled with fluid. It meant two more months in the hospital.

“That was scarier than when he was born,” his father said.

Later that same year, 2009, everything changed for the Brickles.

Sareya Scott-Jarrett, the younger Brickle’s mother, was involved in a car crash in which she was charged with vehicular manslaughter, his father said. Suddenly, it was just him and his three boys, Damir, Andrew, and 2-year-old Cam, too young to understand what was happening. He would ask where his mother was, and in time, he stopped asking. His father got through it.

“I didn’t have time to worry about what my sons did not have, I did whatever I had to do for my three boys,” said the elder Brickle, who played football for West Catholic before getting into the security field and now works as a heavy machine operator. “But at around 4, I started to see it. Cam could not keep his stress bottled inside. There were complications from the accident that triggered other situations.

“Cam is a good kid who has a good heart. But don’t get me wrong, he has had his bouts with depression. Sports and football helped him get through it. Cam has learned a lot through channeling. That comes from me, his grandmother, and his aunt [Colleen Brickle]. We had to keep him going, keep him busy.”

He went from one sport to the next, between football, baseball, boxing, and basketball. There was always something to occupy him. Then the calls would come from school. He tiptoed on thin ice throughout elementary school. The smiling facade was melting. Cam did this, Cam did that. One day in sixth grade, he was called to the principal’s office, wondering what he did wrong again. He was actually being congratulated that day for not getting in trouble.

The younger Brickle laughs at the recollection.

“It was a time in my life when every day I woke up, I was mad,” he recalled. “Someone was going to feel my pain no matter what happened that day. I never really shed that as much as I just outgrew it. If I could go through a time machine, I would smack myself. I don’t know how my dad put up with me. He stuck by me. My aunt stuck by me. I just realized it after all these years it was not because of me that my mom was not around.

“It comes out in the way I play. I didn’t know how to express myself. I do now. I just let it out on the field.”

When contacted, Scott-Jarrett declined to comment for this story.

Each weekday morning at around 6, Brickle and his cousin, Malvern Prep senior running back Chris Smith, take public transportation to the bucolic Chester County campus. During football season, they may not get home until around 8 p.m. It’s a high-end commitment to a high-academic school that costs $38,585 a year on average.

Friars coach Dave Gueriera has made a concerted effort to open the doors to inner-city kids in the West Philly area to the private, Inter-Ac school.

It seemed like a great fit for Brickle.

Then it wasn’t.

After a highly successful freshman year, Brickle gained some national attention and was invited to a pylon camp in Las Vegas the summer heading into his sophomore year. Someone asked him for his father’s cell, and Santa Margarita Catholic High School, in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., which former NFL quarterback Carson Palmer and the Dallas Mavericks’ Klay Thompson attended, entered his world.

Mosese Latu, the Santa Margarita Catholic defensive line coach, communicated the program’s agenda to Brickle’s father, though it was ultimately up to the younger Brickle to make the decision and transfer to a school across the country.

“I ran it through my dad, but he left it up to me, and he told me I had to tell Coach Dave [Gueriera], one of the toughest calls I ever had to make in my life,” said Brickle, who as a 10-year-old had a bullet graze an ear after being caught in a crossfire during a snowball fight with his brother.

Under the rules of the California Interscholastic Federation, Brickle was forced to sit out the first five games of his sophomore year because of the transfer suspension. He played just three games, limited by a right shoulder injury, though was impactful when he did play.

“My position coach, Mosese Latu, was fired,” he said. “The head coach told me one version why he was let go, then he told a teammate a totally different version. Coach Latu was the reason why I went there. I would talk to Coach Latu during lunch breaks and every chance I got. He was the one coach who was truthful to me. I was warned about a lot of things that were going on that could come down the road.

“I was a kid coming from the city who knows you can be put in the wrong place at the wrong time. I always promised myself that would never happen to me. I found it interesting that after the season, the head coach never spoke to anyone on the football team, like we were invisible. We were people during football season and the man would walk right by us like we didn’t exist anymore.”

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Former Santa Margarita Catholic High School coach Anthony Rouzier did not respond to numerous interview requests for this story. In October, Rouzier was placed on administrative leave while an investigation took place for alleged hazing that generated national attention. On Dec. 12, Palmer was named head coach at Santa Margarita.

When he came home this time last year during Christmas break, Brickle’s father could immediately tell something was wrong just by the look on his son’s face. Throughout the time in California, Gueriera spoke to Brickle once a week. He obviously did not like losing him, though he was willing to support anything that was helpful to one of his players.

Brickle and his infectious personality returned to Malvern in January.

“Anyone who meets Cam loves Cam, he’s just that kind of kid,” Gueriera said. “The school loves him. He’s just a great kid, which is a credit to his dad. Cam listens to understand, he doesn’t listen to reply. That’s what I love about Cam. He is a connector. Teachers love Cam. He does well academically and you know Cam is going to have a good road ahead.

“He’s impacted my life tremendously in the time he’s been here. It’s been all good. His personality, his presence, everyone just gravitates towards him. Cam and I don’t just talk about football. We talk about everything. That’s the way he is.”

Brickle stands a chance to make $250,000 minimum in NIL money this time next year, according to multiple sources and college recruiters. Texas, Oklahoma, Penn State, and Oregon all have deep pockets. According to sources, former La Salle star and current Nittany Lions linebacker Abdul Carter makes around $2 million a year in NIL money.

“When I called Coach Gueriera to tell him I was coming back, he could have jumped through the phone,” Brickle said. “I love Malvern Prep. It is home. But I wouldn’t change what happened. I experienced that. I found out I could play at a high level. I found out I didn’t need [Santa Margarita] to prove that. I tell anyone in my position, go for it, take that chance.

“If you hold yourself back in your life, you will never reach your potential. I learned, and I gained connections with people around the country, people I see on TV. The pros overweighed the cons. You never know unless you take a chance. I took a chance and I wouldn’t change that.”

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In a way, he admits, he would like his mother to be a part of what’s ahead. She is battling some demons, he says, “but I forgive her, although I’m not here doing any of this without my dad. I saw what anger does. I could be angry at the world. I’m not. I’m just angry on a football field,” he says with a laugh.

“I have friends in the city whose dads are locked up or were shot dead. I played with two kids from the Overbrook Monarchs that were shot and killed. Three have been in and out of jail that are around my age. Look at rapper Lil Buckss . I know kids who played with him. These were kids that had a chance to be something.

“Luckily, I stayed on my mission.”

A mission he hopes that eventually leads to tugging a hat on his head on a lighted stage before thousands and giving NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a bear hug, flashing a genuine grin.