PALMER, Alaska (KTUU/Gray News) – A high school football player from Alaska has two reasons to celebrate after his team won his senior night game and his longtime girlfriend said yes when he asked her to marry him.
Chandler Coman, a senior lineman for Palmer High School’s football team, proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Layla Buzzard, after Friday’s game. He dropped to one knee in his team’s end zone and popped the question as teammates, friends, family and cameras watched on.
“These last three years have been absolutely wonderful. I’ve loved every second of it,” said Chandler Coman as he proposed to Buzzard. “I would like to continue that journey with you. Will you marry me?”
Buzzard enthusiastically agreed, and the two embraced to the cheers of onlookers, many of whom had been in on it for weeks and some even longer.
“It’s been a couple months in the making,” Coman said. “I got a lot of people in on it, so that was the challenge. It was definitely difficult, but we got it done.”
Buzzard, for her part, was oblivious.
“I had no idea. It’s definitely a big surprise,” she said. “I was a little weirded out, and I’m like, ‘Why is there so many people?’”
Among the throng of onlookers was Chandler Coman’s father, Aaron, from whom the groom-to-be got some valuable advice when he first posed the idea of asking Buzzard’s father for permission to marry her.
“I said, ‘Well, let me ask you one thing: if he says no, are you still gonna marry her?’ He says, ‘Maybe,’” Aaron Coman said. “I said, ‘Then, you better not ask permission. You better ask for his blessing.’ Once he had the answer, he put all the work into planning it.”
Chandler Coman met Buzzard through the Palmer chapter of Future Farmers of America, of which he is the president.
“The connection that I felt with her over the course of three years has been just absolutely amazing,” he said. “I don’t want to let that go.”
The couple certainly hope for a bright future together. Any plans more specific than that had to wait until Saturday.
“We’ll be celebrating tomorrow,” Chandler Coman said. “I’m going to go home and sleep. That was a hard-fought game.”
The newly engaged couple also have Friday’s win over Chugiak High School to celebrate. With it, the Palmer Moose seem in good shape to contend for their first championship ring in over a decade.
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