Chase and Sydney Brown Are Identical Twins Headed to the NFL — Who Are Their Parents?
Published April 26 2023, 12:15 p.m. ET
The NFL Draft kicks off on April 27, 2023, and the names Chase and Sydney Brown are on the tips of sports fans' tongues. The Ontario, Canada natives both played for the University of Illinois and are expected to go pro.
Brothers, let alone twins, are rare in the NFL. Naturally, fans are curious about the Brown twins and their families. Ahead, we'll tell you about Chase and Sydney's parents' difficult story.
Chase and Sydney Brown's parents were not together when the twins were growing up.
Sydney, a safety, and Chase, a running back, were raised by a single mom named Raechel, a former figure skater, who had the boys when she was only 18 years old.
"It's been a journey," she said about the twins' childhood, which included a lot of moving around and living in shelters. "A lot of great and a lot of not-so-great all mixed together."
The Brown twins, who played football from a young age, did not know their dad (former Canadian League football player Darren Isaac) while growing up.
Chase and Sydney got an opportunity to play football for an elite private school in Florida, at which point Raechel admitted to a family the boys would live with near campus, "I said, 'I depend more on them than they depend on me.' That was the reason why it was so important for them to go and focus on themselves."
Chase Brown during his high school years in Bradenton, Florida.
“It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” she told Sports Illustrated about saying goodbye to her sons in Florida and heading back to Canada. “It was totally unnatural, leaving your kids in another country with people you don’t know. I cried the whole way back.”
Raechel made huge sacrifices for her sons to play football in the United States, even losing her home for a second time so she could pay tuition to St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Bradenton.
“It was not something I really told them,” she admitted about experiencing homelessness while the boys were at school. “I just said they couldn’t come home.”
But the hard times have given way to a bright future for the so-called "mirror" twins, whose features mirror one another's.
“They’re so hardworking and so dedicated in everything they do,” their mom ultimately said. “They deserve this so much. They’ve done so many things we’ve never imagined.”
Do Chase and Sydney Brown have any siblings?
The NFL-bound Brown twins have a sister named Mya who is younger than her brothers.
Raechel has said she was very sick after her daughter was born and struggled to work, leading in part to the difficulty the family experienced with homelessness.
In the meantime, social media is buzzing over the Brown twins' prospects in the NFL Draft. One thing is certain: We will be seeing a lot of Chase and Sydney in the coming years.
Here's wishing the twins the best of luck in the draft! We will be watching their journey — as will their mom of course, whose story is truly uplifting.
