This story is part one of a series on the Des Moines Register’s top 10 Iowa high school football seniors. Each week until the end of the season, we will feature a different senior, showing readers a side of them that goes beyond the Friday night lights.

BROOKLYN — It’s before 8 a.m. on a Friday in mid-August, and Iowa high school football players shuffle from the air conditioning inside Brooklyn Guernsey Malcolm (BGM) High School and into the humidity rising in the grass field behind the building.

The teenagers prepare for the start of practice in relative quiet, and the chirps of bush crickets echo in the silence.

On the periphery of the huddle stands Beau Burns, the Bears’ starting quarterback. The 5-foot-11, 173-pound senior doesn’t stand out from the crowd. He blends in seamlessly w

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