Success in sports is nothing new to Ryan Hewitt. Starting at fullback for Stanford in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day is just the most recent highlight for the Denver native.

But that success sprouted from a local source. Hewitt's uncle, Jim Miller Jr., played on the first playoff football team for the Newman Comets in 1977, and his late grandfather, Jim Miller Sr., was a standout Comet defensive player back in the early 1930s.

And while Hewitt doesn't remember a lot of football talk on his visits to the family farm in Nelson as a youngster, he's proud to be carrying on a legacy and tradition that goes back nearly four decades.