Every athlete has a number. It’s on their jerseys, sleeves, helmets, and even their shoes. For many athletes their number is just as important as their name.
Recently the number 32 has been fresh on the minds of the Aledo community due to the passing of Noah Bates.
Bates, 11, died in a tragic UTV accident on May 15.
The community rallied around the family in a dark time and remembered Noah by wearing pink (Noah’s favorite color) while the Bearcats baseball team marched through the playoffs.
While the baseball season came to a premature end, the Bates family received another nod when Bearcats defensive tackle Ansel Din-Mbuh came to them wanting to change his football jersey number from 38 to 32.
“I’ve never really had a special number,” Din-Mbuh said. “I’ve always liked the lower digit numbers, but 38 is what I got my sophomore year so I just wore that.”
Din-Mbuh got to know the Bates family while his younger brother Akhil played on a youth football team coached by Noah’s father, Glenn.
“I’ve coached since Noah played flag football,” Glenn explained. “Akhil has always been on my team and Ansel would come to the practices and games; he would run the chains and just wanted to be on the sidelines with the boys.”
Din-Mbuh had the privilege to truly know Noah as the personalities of the two blended from the start.
“He thought Ansel was a beast,” Noah’s mother Katy remembered. “He was always telling Ansel that he was going to make it big someday. There was just a special bond between them.”
“I looked up to Noah,” Din-Mbuh said. “Even though he was younger than me, it was just the energy he gave off and the type of person he was. I wanted to be like Noah, he was a great kid, he was happy and he always put others before himself, and that’s something I want to be big on.”
After Noah’s passing, Din-Mbuh decided that he wanted to do something special for his friends and went to the Bates family with a request.
“He asked for one of Noah’s jerseys,” Katy recalled. “He came by and picked it up and every varsity player signed it and the coaches, and they brought it back to us in a shadowbox on the day of the service.”
That was not the only thing Din-Mbuh had prepared. Not long after receiving the shocking news, Din-Mbuh made the decision to go from number 38 to number 32.
“I texted coach (Tim) Buchanan immediately,” Din-Mbuh said. “I asked if I could wear 32 and he said ‘of course.’ I wanted to make stickers too and he said we’ll find more ways to honor him. Then I went to their house and I asked for their blessing. Thankfully they said yes.”
Glenn recalled, “We were blown away by the offer. Like, what kid does that? So we were thrilled, of course we said yes.”
Din-Mbuh’s senior year will be spent wearing a number that truly means something to him for the first time ever, and he knows it.
“I think personally that when I go out on the field, I already have the most energy,” Din-Mbuh said. “So now when I go out there I want to make sure that everyone knows when they leave the field that I outplayed them, and they’re going to know who number 32 was.”
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