Vikings Fan Who Took Viral Photo of Kirk Cousins Describes ‘Special’ Moment

When Emilie LeCompte and her 9-year-old son, Quinn, pulled up to the Minnesota Vikings’ training facility on Monday for the team’s annual trick-or-treat event, Quinn told his mother how cool it would be if quarterback Kirk Cousins was there.

LeCompte told Quinn she didn’t think Cousins would be present. After all, just a day before, Cousins had suffered a noncontact injury in the fourth quarter of the Vikings’ 24-10 victory over the Green Bay Packers. The injury immediately looked like an Achilles tear, and an MRI on Monday morning confirmed the bad news.

So LeCompte tried to keep Quinn’s expectations low.

“I was like, ‘Bud, I don’t think that’s going to happen. You were watching the game yesterday,'” LeCompte told Newsweek. “He’s like, ‘I know. It would just be really cool.'”

But when LeCompte and Quinn entered the facility with a group of friends, they spotted someone who looked like Cousins with his leg elevated on a scooter. Sure enough, the 35-year-old and his wife were at the event, off to the side.

LeCompte asked a security guard if they were allowed to approach Cousins.

“I don’t think they understood where we were asking to go, but they were like, ‘Yeah, you can go over there,'” she said.

Thrilled by their luck, the two walked over to Cousins and spoke to his wife briefly while he finished up another conversation. Then they got a chance to speak to Quinn’s favorite player.

“The kids’ faces were just in awe of being right there in front of him,” LeCompte said. “He was so kind and friendly and just very personable with the kids.”

The conversation wasn’t long (LeCompte said she felt “guilty the whole time,” since Cousins was at the event with his family), but they expressed their sympathies for his injury and told him they would be praying for his recovery.

“We were just talking about how the boys were so excited to watch the game, and it was an amazing game up until the moment when he was injured,” LeCompte said. “Kirk said something along the lines of, ‘Yeah, but it was a great game, wasn’t it? A win is a win.”

She continued: “I was in awe that my son was actually meeting him, and those kids just didn’t even know what to say to him at all.”

As the group turned to leave, Quinn was still clutching a football and a Sharpie he brought to the event to collect autographs. LeCompte told him he needed to “at least ask” Cousins for one.

“So my shy, football-loving boy is like, ‘Kirk, would you mind signing my football please?'” LeCompte said. “And he said, ‘Of course,’ and he signed it. The other kids then felt they had enough courage to get their things signed…. The look on my son’s face the rest of the night, he was just on cloud nine.”

LeCompte snapped a photo of Cousins signing Quinn’s football and sent it to her brother, Blair Reynolds. LeCompte’s husband is a fan of the Packers, but Quinn gravitated toward the Vikings because he lives in Minnesota (with a little urging from his uncle).

“It’s just so fun to have something that you can bond with a kid that’s, like, 39 years younger than me,” Reynolds told Newsweek. “To be able to have something in common and to talk to a kid who knows all the stats, knows every player—that excitement makes you feel excited too. It’s really cool.”

Reynolds said he enjoys taking Quinn to Vikings games, although he didn’t attend the event on Monday. But he posted the photo of Quinn’s autograph on Twitter on Monday evening. When he saw it going viral Tuesday morning, he was shocked.

Still, Reynolds was glad to see his high opinion of Cousins’ character validated.

“The thing about the photo to me was the lesson to be learned for a kid,” Reynolds said. “When kids grow up, they are going to have bad days, whether it’s an injury like Cousins, or a bad day at work, or a bad day at school or a bad day at home. How do you respond to that? How Kirk responded is a great example not only for a 9-year-old but also for me and other adults—to see that you can still make a difference even on one of your worst days.

“So I think that was the gist of why I wanted to put it out there.”

LeCompte was struck by how down-to-earth Cousins acted despite the circumstances.

“When you walk in and you see a professional football player in not his strongest moment, I was very sad that the game took that turn,” she said. “I don’t know, he just seemed like a normal guy. On one hand, he was a football player, my son’s idol, but on the other hand, it was just a normal guy who had an injury and just was so kind to the kids. It just was a special moment.”

Reynolds said that he’s happy the Vikings are represented by a player like Cousins.

“In Minnesota, we have deep sense of pride for the people who represent us, and I can’t think of a better representative of Minnesota sports right now than Kirk Cousins,” he said. “He’s just a stand-up dude, has a strong belief system, and the way he treats people is phenomenal.”