Cyrus and Lucas Revenaugh lost their father when they were 9 years old.
Their mother died the spring before they went into high school, and a few months later, they lost their home. But they had their older brother. They had family friends, and they had their football family at Berlin High School.
The fraternal twins are senior linebackers and an integral part of the defense for the No. 6 seeded Berlin football team, which will travel to play No. 2 Brookfield in a Class M semifinal game Sunday at 12:30 p.m.
Lucas leads the team in tackles with 72. Cyrus, who is a captain, has 57. They both plan to go to college, although they won’t play football there. Lucas is also an all-conference swimmer for Berlin and runs track. Cyrus plays basketball.
“I’ve tried to follow the Ted Lasso coaching way more than anything else, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get to know the kids and understand what they’re going through,” Berlin coach Joe Aresimowicz said. “With them, if you met them today, you’d think they’re great kids, everything’s going well.”
But for a long time, everything wasn’t.
“I think it put us at an advantage compared to other kids because we really had to do a lot of things on our own,” Lucas said.
“We faced hardships at a young age,” Cyrus said. “I’m not saying it’s a good thing by any means, but it gave us a lot of perspective.”
Football roots
David Revenaugh played football at Fairfield Prep and chose Wesleyan, even though, as one of his friends wrote upon his death in the Wesleyan Argus, he probably could have gone to a bigger football school.
His sophomore year he was a running back for the undefeated 1969 Cardinals football team which is enshrined in the Wesleyan Athletic Hall of Fame.
“Back in the day, Rev was a football legend,” his friend Karl Schumacher wrote. “He was not simply part of the Lambert Cup Division III ’69 undefeated national championship team. With every due respect to the other many great ones, he and Pete Panciera were the difference. He held many Wes records for decades. 6’1, 235, fast as a rocket and bruising.
“If you watched the tapes, his punishing, accurate blocking was as much impressive as his running and receiving. He had the football pedigree out of Fairfield Prep and could have chosen Syracuse or Notre Dame. He wanted (Wesleyan). He did not want to be remembered as a jock. For Wes, it paid big time. Rev was the deal — he delivered. I could not capture here the fun and joy of his athleticism.”
Revenaugh married Carol Pease in 1990 and their first son Nat was born. Ten years later, the twins were born in 2006. Nat went to Northwest Catholic, where he played basketball. He helped take care of his brothers when they were young.
The brothers remember their dad drawing up football plays for them to run when they were little but said their mother didn’t want them to play football. They played soccer and other sports. Their dad was always sick when they were younger, and the twins remember visiting him in the hospital. He died at age 65 in 2016.
“I feel like it was hard to process when we were 9 years old,” Lucas said. “It started to affect us as we got older.”
The boys attended a small private school in Berlin, Mooreland Hill, where their mother worked as a science teacher. The school closed in 2019, and they had to go to public school. As their mother struggled with the loss of her husband, Nat went off to college.
“That was a really tough time,” Nat said. “They had me around every single day, but then I went to college. I would come back every month or so and go to their soccer and basketball games.”
In the spring of 2021, their mom died. She was 64.
“We were in eighth grade, and it was during COVID,” Lucas said. “That took a huge toll because we had already lost our dad. Our big brother had just gotten out of college and was starting to work and he had to start taking care of me and my brother. He became our guardian.”
Nat said they had to leave the house they grew up in because he couldn’t afford to live there. Sheila and Don Rittman, whose son was a friend of Nat, owned a duplex. The twins and Nat were able to move there.
It was a lot at times for Nat and a struggle for all of them.
“I tried my best,” said Nat, who is 27. “We were helped out by a lot of other people. We were able to stay in a place for a reduced price with the help of Sheila’s family. We did that for about a year and a half then it kind of snowballed to where it worked out really well for (the twins) to move in with Sheila and her family.”
They moved in before Christmas last year, and the Rittmans became the twins’ guardians.
Guardian angels
The Rittmans had known the three boys since their youngest son became friends with Nat at Mooreland Hill.
“I was the house with the swimming pool, so (Nat) would come over and he’d say, ‘Can I bring the twins?’” Sheila Rittman said. “When we heard their mother died, my husband and I started sending food over, and we got to know them at this age. We started going to their sporting events.”
The Rittmans became close to the twins. When they realized they could help out even more, they didn’t hesitate.
“They’re just dolls,” Sheila Rittman said. “I can’t tell you how very much we love them. I have four grown children, and these guys are part of our family. My kids tease them, love them, give them a hard time, just like siblings.”
And people around the twins have noticed a difference.
“Lucas is very adaptable, very personable,” Sheila Rittman said. “Cyrus, when he first was staying with us was quiet, more introverted. The assistant principal and I spoke last winter. He was the kid walking down the hall with the hoodie up. Getting it done, but not really smiling or looking or talking.
“A couple months in, he’s captain of the football team, he’s a leader, his grades have gone up. I think it was a big difference in his self-confidence. He just grew so much in the last year. I think he just needed the stability of family just to shine. It was there.”
Sheila Rittman told the boys she was pretty easygoing, but they were not to lie to her or there would be consequences. She said Cyrus lied to her one day and she grounded him for the weekend, and he was kind of shocked.
“He said, ‘I’ve never been grounded,’” Sheila Rittman said. “I said, ‘I know. Welcome to life with Sheila, good and bad.’”
Nat spent Thanksgiving with his brothers and the Rittmans.
“I’m down the road in New Britain, five minutes away,” Nat said. “And they’re in an amazing happy environment with Sheila and her family. Sheila is absolutely wonderful.”
Said Lucas: “After we graduate, they said, ‘This home is your home now.’”
“They’re the best,” Cyrus added. “They’re our second mom and dad now. We can just focus on school and sports and getting into college like normal kids.”
Another kind of family
The twins started playing football in middle school, even though their mother wasn’t thrilled about it, and they continued in high school. The football team became their second family.
Midway through last season, Lucas quit. Cyrus was starting at linebacker, but Lucas was in kind of a limbo between varsity and junior varsity and didn’t like it. Cyrus was mad at him.
“I called him a couple of choice words,” Cyrus said. “He’s really gifted, I mean anything he does, if he puts his mind to it — like swimming — he can do it. I try to keep him in line. I know how good he can be.”
Lucas said he regretted quitting. He was welcomed back by Aresimowicz this season.
“It happens, I don’t hold it against the kids,” Aresimowicz said. “Come on back, you’re always welcome. It’s family.”
They love playing next to each other. “It’s awesome,” they both said in unison. When Lucas makes a tackle, Cyrus is right there to congratulate him and vice versa.
“They’re two of the most reliable players we have on our team,” Aresimowicz said. “They do all the extra work to get better, and they never complain about anything.”
As this period of their lives is coming to an end, Lucas plans to go to the University of Rhode Island and study business. Cyrus wants to enroll in the ROTC program at James Madison. He’s waiting to see if he is in.
They may go separate ways for the first time, although Cyrus said that URI is his No. 2 choice.
“My expectation when they came was that they were glued to each other and they do everything together,” Sheila Rittman said. “But it’s not true. They are very different boys who love each other and have their backs but they also have their own lives and their own interests.
“But when I watch them on the football field, it’s like a magnet, they’re talking to somebody, then they’re just wandering and they’re next to each other without even realizing it,” she said.
That closeness has helped them get through hard times.
“I think having a twin and growing up doing the same things with them and going through something difficult like we did really brought us together and made us rely on each other,” Lucas said. “It created a different bond between me and Cyrus that a lot of other twins or brothers don’t have, which is why we’re so close.”