He Lost His Best Friend, Scored 8 Touchdowns the Next Day

On Thursday, Alex Brown posted an emotional tribute to his mom, who died that day after a 14-year battle with cancer, on Twitter. On Friday night, the high school quarterback scored eight touchdowns for his New Jersey football team, USA Today reports. The story went viral by Saturday—Brown's 18th birthday—with even Tom Brady weighing in. "I posted a video because I wanted to make a tribute, posted it on Instagram and Twitter thanking her for watching over me," Brown says. "I looked the next day and I have over 5 million views and 100,000 likes and I’m getting a call from ESPN SportsCenter and getting a call from Fox. And I see Tom Brady commenting and texting me a nice paragraph about me and my mom and playing football."

Brown said he never had any doubts about playing in the Red Bank Catholic playoff game against Morris Catholic, which his team won, because that's what his mom would have wanted. She loved to watch him and her younger son play, the family says, and had last attended a game Oct. 15. "It was just an incredibly emotional—even to the point a lot of things my wife did, things like she would kick him three times in the butt and says, ‘Go get ‘em, Tiger,’ and I had to do that," his dad says of the Friday game. "So it was emotional. He was texting her phone right before the game saying things to her." Brown threw six touchdown passes and ran for another two. The team now hopes to win the championship in honor of Brown's mom, CBS 2 reports. (More uplifting news stories.)