Most teams honor a venerated jersey number by retiring it. Not Thomas Cameron’s #12.
6-minute read
Thomas Cameron was a Coast Guard Academy graduate from Portland, Oregon. He was a beloved captain of the Bears soccer team and a top goal-scorer. In February 2012, Lieutenant Cameron was killed in a helicopter crash in Mobile, Alabama during his final week of flight training.
Cameron was known for his exceptional athleticism, indefatigable work ethic, and magnetic personality. Following his death, Cameron’s name and jersey number became a portrait of everything Coast Guard soccer stood for.
Professional or college teams usually retire a player’s number in such circumstances. But rather than remove Cameron’s #12 from service, and after requests to name the field after Cameron were denied by the Coast Guard, men’s head soccer coach Chris Parsons decided to award the number to a chosen senior.
The effect was dramatic.
In the 2012 season, with Cameron’s unexpected death still raw and stinging the Coast Guard soccer family, his parents and brother watched closely from Portland as Greg Kennerley donned #12 for the first time. The New London Day ran the article “Twelve: More than Just a Number,” and the Boston Globe did a piece on the local kid from Weymouth who had received the “unbelievable honor.” Kennerley, pictured in the #12 jersey and captain’s armband above, led the Bears to their first ECAC Championship since 2008, Cameron’s final season.
Legions of new Coast Guard soccer fans and Academy graduates around the country, generations of whom played for Parsons, streamed grainy webcasts of the championship match online. Kennerley’s fiery on-field persona and habit of scoring game-winning goals left crowds enraptured. Cameron seemed to be on the field with the team, somersaulting in exuberant celebration and tackling teammates with irrepressible joy.
Several months before the crash that took his life, Cameron had returned to New London during a break from flight training to coach soccer. During that time, Kennerley and Cameron grew close. “He told me that if there was anyone qualified to carry on the legacy of being aggressive and demonstrating the intensity of Coast Guard soccer, that it was me,” Kennerley told the Boston Globe.
Heather Parsons has been a mainstay in the stands at Coast Guard matches since her husband took over the men’s soccer program in 2002. During that memorable stretch of victories in 2012, she described Kennerley and the team’s game as “infused with Thomas.” Fans who witnessed that stirring season recall the supernatural timeliness of the team’s performance.
Fast forward to the 2014 season, Parsons’ team lost just once in its first 14 games, with eleven victories coming by one goal. The trophy case in Roland Hall already held the Secretary’s Cup, having defeated rival Merchant Marine Academy for the third consecutive year. Coast Guard also spoiled 21st-ranked Babson College’s homecoming with a 2-1 double overtime victory and the Bears broke into the NCAA Top 25 ranking for the first time in school history. Several hours after receiving the news, the team marched across Mohegan Avenue and reclaimed the Whale Cup from rival Connecticut College. The team continued to win, reaching as high as the second-ranked team in the New England region and 14th in the nation.
Parsons was making all the right moves. But if you asked him, his best decision was made when he turned Cameron’s #12 into an eternal flame.
Enter Coast Guard forward John Tarzian (pronounced like the heroic jungle adventurer), team captain, and humble new owner of number twelve. In the first weeks of the 2015 season, Tarzian emphatically closed out three opponents with game-winning goals, including an 18-yard driving volley to beat Conn College. Tarzian, who is a decorated athlete, once deadpanned, “Wearing number twelve was the biggest honor I have ever received as a player, period.”
Late in 2015, the Bears defeated MIT at home in the rain, wearing the visitors down in a customary 1-0 victory. In yet another serendipitous emulation of Thomas Cameron, Tarzian’s selfless challenge to win a ball in the first half left him with a fractured shin bone. Tarzian was crushed to learn he would miss the second half of the season. Coincidentally, at the end of Cameron’s senior year seven years earlier, x-rays revealed he too suffered a broken foot in the final month of the season—though he was able to play through his injury with a steady regimen of ice baths and attention from athletic trainers.
Expectations for future players wearing jersey number twelve had been set impossibly high.
While the cadets who wear Cameron’s number cannot be expected to produce magic, the criteria set by Parsons for receiving the honor guarantees the player will be charismatic, play a hard-nosed, gritty game, and be the team’s spiritual leader wellspring of fraternal love. The players who wear twelve consistently provide the heart and muscle behind the fast and aggressive Coast Guard brand of soccer.
Kennerley, two-year captain Jake Rendon, Lucas Benedetto, and Tarzian have each seen exceptional success in their turns carrying on Cameron’s legacy. Each has surpassed expectations and delivered paranormal elevations of performance. The four seem to have been duly rewarded by the man they honor, although not by divine intervention, but by their own tireless pursuit of adequacy and the fulfillment of a promise to Cameron. They have embraced their roles and taken the custodianship of Cameron’s number seriously, as have the twelve players who have worn the number since, including Parsons’ son (see gallery).
Now that the Bears current athletes are years removed from anyone who personally knew Cameron, his legend has grown. Academy soccer players, already immersed in an environment of honor and tradition, now measure themselves against a predecessor whose zest and zeal for life and sport was limitless.
“Wearing the number twelve jersey is the greatest honor of my service career,” Benedetto, the 2014 recipient, reflected. “Those who have worn number twelve will have different interpretations of what it meant to them but, it will inspire and emotionally move us all the same like nothing else I have seen. To me, it represents the never-ending search to achieve greatness both on the pitch and in life. It means to work harder, run faster and jump farther than your opponent. It means to keep going, even on the days you’re tired, feel sick, or want to give up. Success is never freely given, it is earned. This is who Thomas was and that is what it means to wear the number twelve. Wearing that jersey meant the world to me and I will take that with me wherever I go.”
For those players fortunate enough to wear his number, Cameron’s traits seem to steep into its bearer. It seems the magic of the twelve-man on the field might be more real than imagined.
Peter Deneen (#8) twinned alongside Cameron as a captain and striker on the 2008 Coast Guard Academy men’s soccer team. He is a 2009 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy.
The Twelves:
2012, Greg Kennerley
2013, Jake Rendon
2014, Lucas Benedetto
2015, John Tarzian
2016, Alex Lane
2017, Luke Telang
2018, Quintin Parsons
2019, Gio Ottomanelli
2020, Noa Pagatpatan
2021, Mike Daunt
2022, John Flood
2023, Charlie Fish