Nolan Larkin’s football journey has taken some unusual twists

Nolan Larkin considers his job a great “ice-breaker.” He enjoys seeing the reaction when he informs people he’s a mortician’s assistant and certified crematorium operator.

It’s not the typical gap-year job a prospective college football player might take, and it’s not one Larkin foresaw when he was offered a chance to work at Kuhn Funeral Home & Crematory. He thought he’d be doing office work, greeting mourners or helping with funerals.

He’s a little deeper into the business than that. He assists with corpses in the morgue, operates the cremator and does transfers — picking up bodies at family homes or the hospital and delivering them to the morgue.

“It was rough for the first two weeks,” he said of being around lifeless bodies, “then your brain warms up to it as much as it can.”

He doesn’t seem to mind the work at all.

“It’ll make a fantastic interview story when I do get out of college,” he said.

Larkin’s football story is just as fascinating. He’ll play defensive back at Bryant College in the fall, but reaching that goal didn’t come via a straight path.

He ended up going to three high schools in the same calendar year, saw his senior football season delayed and then practically wiped out by the COVID-19, and saw his dream of playing college football put on hold because of the pandemic.

“It’s been very difficult at times,” he said of his extended journey. “The highs are really high and the lows are really low. I just had to keep chugging away and believing in myself.”

Larkin attended Berks Catholic from ninth through 11th grade, playing running back and competing in the sprints and jumps in track. When his junior track season in 2020 was suspended — along with all spring sports across the state — and the coronavirus continued to spread he grew worried his final football season might be in jeopardy, too.

In early summer of 2020 there was great uncertainly whether the PIAA would proceed with fall sports, and whether Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf would allow it even if the state’s high school governing body approved.

“I was worried,” he said of seeing football canceled. “That was at the top of my mind. When our school was shut down, I said: ‘I have to put myself in the best position to play in college,’ “

He had connections to a top football school in Connecticut — his father’s cousin, Tom McInerny, played at perennial state champ New Canaan — and thought that might be an opportunity. He tracked the COVID numbers throughout the summer and thought Connecticut had the best metrics of any state in the country, so he transferred to New Canaan High.

“If there’s any state I think is going to play football, it should be this one,” he reasoned.

Larkin is fast — he has run the 100 in 10.89 and had a track offer at Lehigh — but he could not out-run COVID. By mid-August he and his New Canaan teammates learned that the CIAC — Connecticut’s version of the PIAA — was suspending the season.

“There were a a lot of sleepless nights here and there over it,” Larkin said. “It was really rough to go through. I was riding on (playing at New Canaan) to be my ticket into college. I had a ton of FCS schools (interested after) my junior year. They wanted to see me at camps to run the 40 but I couldn’t do that (because the camps were canceled).”

Parents at New Canaan and other local schools, disgruntled by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s decision to suspend play, went about forming their own league. They got it off the ground and Larkin and the Rams were back on the field in October. A few weeks later Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont shut it all down.

“We found out two days after playing our third game,” Larkin said. “It was quite shocking for us all. It was chaotic.”

Following the truncated season Larkin found himself with no scholarship offers and little interest from colleges. When New Canaan went to all-virtual learning in December he decided to return home and transferred to Wyomissing. He looked forward to reconnecting with friends he had grown up with.

He enjoyed the reunion and prospered on the track. He earned District 3 Class 2A gold medals in the 100 and 4×100 relay and a silver in the 200.

He teamed on the relay with Jordan Auman, Jason Gartner and Amory Thompson, Spartans football players he had been pulling for in the fall of 2020, when they made it to the first of back-to-back state championship games. He was able to attend the game against Central Valley.

“It was really rough watching them,” he said. “If I could do it all over again, I probably would’ve stayed at Wyomissing and competed with those guys throughout high school. I knew with my ability I really could’ve helped them.”

That being said he doesn’t regret his time in Connecticut. He enjoyed his new teammates and playing for Lou Marinelli, the winningest coach in state history. He credits Marinelli and his staff for bringing out the best in him.

“They really made me twice the football player I was beforehand,” he said. “It was a big factor in me going to camps last summer and being able to perform the way I did.”

After graduating from Wyomissing in 2021 Larkin went to prospect camps at Cornell, Bucknell, Brown, Lehigh and Yale; he received no offers until December, from Bryant, an FCS school located in Smithfield, R.I. The Bulldogs will play in the Big South Conference this season after leaving the Northeast Conference.

Larkin can’t wait to report in August. He has played only a handful of games over the past 30 months.

“If I could go up right now and start practicing, I 100 percent would,” he said.

For much of the past year he has trained for football, with early morning workouts before heading to the crematorium and afternoon sessions at Garage Strength.

“This is what I’ve been working for the last five years,” Larkin said. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. It was really hard waking up every morning and working out and training when there was really no end in sight for a long period of time.

“I just wanted to be out there competing; I missed the game. In the long run it will help because it made me realize how much I love football and how badly I want to play.”