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Mt. Pleasant’s LaFleur Brothers Face Off for Super Bowl Berth

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On Sunday, the Packers and 49ers square off in the NFC Championship with a ticket to the Super Bowl on the line.

This means one Mt. Pleasant family is going to be divided. Packers head coach Matt LaFleur facing his younger brother, Mike, the 49ers passing game coordinator.

Winner gets the big game.

It all started in the Mt. Pleasant High School football locker room for the LeFleur brothers. Even though they both played, they never played with each other, with Matt being eight years older than Mike.

They both showed a penchant for coaching and wanting to understand the game deeper. That got them to coach together, most notably with the Falcons a few years ago when they went to the Super Bowl, blowing that 28-3 lead to the Patriots.

Now there’s a chance for just one of them to make the Super Bowl, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less exciting for the community of Mt. Pleasant.

“There’s a lot of pride in Mt. Pleasant with what’s going on and we’re super excited,” says Jason McIntyre, head football coach for the Oilers. “We’re happy one of them is going to the Super Bowl and too bad both couldn’t make it. That’s the way it shakes out.”

They made it look easy, but it certainly isn’t. The LaFleur brothers started in Mt. Pleasant as the kids of two coaches and now are reaching the top of their sport.

“Matt was fortunate enough that his first job was with someone who’s the same age as him, by the name of Kyle Shanahan,” McIntyre says. “He got to learn the game through him and his dad. Then Mike, of course, learned from Matt and those kind of things just continued on.”

Matt gets the headlines as a head coach, but little brother Mike is right on his heels on the coaching ladder.

“I could see a little bit of that teacher-coach in Mike and then he was just in the right place at the right time,” says Jim Conway, Mt. Pleasant athletic director. “The relationships help and eventually he’s got a stand on his own merits, and he’s done that.

The two faced each other in week 12 with the 49ers winning 37-8. The little brother winning round 1 but round 2 means a bit more.

“I think there’s a little different vibe, so I’ll just leave it at that,” Matt says. “I haven’t really talked to him much at all and it’ll probably be that way for the remainder of the week.”

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