'What's up, dudes?': Aaron Rodgers thrills two Packers fan brothers from Connecticut

Kendra Meinert | Green Bay Press-Gazette

Show Caption Hide Caption Aaron Rodgers speaks at high school sports awards Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers spoke to high school athletes during the 2018 Wisconsin High School Sports Awards.

Summer vacation stories don’t come any better than the one Luke and Treyson Bennett have to tell.

It stars Aaron Rodgers.

The two young brothers from Stratford, Connecticut, found themselves not just up past midnight on Tuesday, but chatting with the Green Bay Packers quarterback.

“What’s up, dudes?” Rodgers said when he spotted them waiting outside an event he was attending at Mohegan Sun casino and resort in Uncasville, Connecticut. He was there for the State Farm Showdown, a two-day charity golf outing he co-hosted with Houston Rockets point guard Chris Paul.

@AaronRodgers12 You made their night! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to them! #ClassAct 🐐#gopackgo pic.twitter.com/JUE2YtR3tw — Matt (@MatthewQB) June 27, 2018

The passionate Packers fans they are, the Bennett family — Matt and Heclliam and their two sons, Luke, 9, and Treyson, 7 — decided to kick off summer vacation by making the hour drive over to Mohegan to watch Rodgers golf. When they learned he was at a function at the casino the night before, they arrived around 10 p.m. in hopes they might get a glimpse of him.

Rodgers noticed the boys in the Packers caps waiting patiently and sent someone over to say he would like to say hello. At 12:30 a.m., there was Rodgers, shaking hands with the boys and bending down to their level to ask them questions about what sports they play. When they told him they both play flag football sponsored by the NFL in their hometown, he said he wished that would’ve been available when he was a kid.

They weren’t nervous, Matt Bennett said, because Rodgers couldn’t have been nicer.

“I can’t say enough about what a great guy he is,” he said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think that we would be one-on-one with Aaron Rodgers. ... It just turned into a night we’ll never forget.”

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While Matt and Heclliam couldn’t stop smiling as they watched the encounter, next thing they knew he was talking to them, too. “How about you, Dad, what’s your story? Are you a Packers fan?” Rodgers asked.

“In my head, I’m like, ‘I can’t believe I’m really standing here talking to Aaron Rodgers.’ It was unreal, even for me. I felt like a big kid at 35 years old,” Bennett said. “Just a very charismatic and caring guy. Very genuine.”

Bennett’s dad grew up a Packers fan and passed it on to his son. Now Bennett is doing the same with his sons. The boys made their first trip to Green Bay last year to watch the Packers-Bengals game at Lambeau Field. They still had a magazine they bought at the airport during that trip. Rodgers signed it on Tuesday and posed for photos with the family.

When the boys got back up to the hotel room that night, they were in bed but couldn’t stop talking about what had just happened.

“I think they watched the video and looked at pictures for over an hour,” Bennett said.

They saw Rodgers again the next morning at the tournament at Mohegan Sun Golf Club.

“The boys were respectful of the fact of, hey, they had their moment with him, so we didn’t bother him ... He acknowledged the boys several times, and the boys just felt super, super special and super important,” Bennett said.

“Aaron really had an impact on them. I definitely think they’ll be lifelong Packers fans and Aaron Rodgers fans. It really was the greatest 24-hour period of their young lives.”