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Before the confetti could even settle on Sunday’s Super Bowl championship in Miami, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was whisked off to the Lombardi and MVP trophy presentations, a South Beach after-party into the wee hours of the morning and a Super Bowl MVP parade at Disney World. But not before he got to enjoy a full-circle moment he’d been wishing for since he decided to pursue football: being able to say, “I’m going to Disney World.”

As a 17-year-old high school quarterback in 2013, Mahomes tweeted, “I bet it feels amazing to be the quarterback who says, ‘I’m going to Disney World,’ after winning the Super Bowl. #QBs”.

His dream came true.

“I think just seeing the excitement and the joy. I’ve always seen it, you always see it every single year, when the quarterbacks say it — it’s such an iconic thing,” Mahomes said in an interview with ESPN. “I didn’t even remember tweeting it until it came back out before the Super Bowl. For me, it was just such an iconic thing and something that was special, and I wanted to do that. And now I have and I’m here — it’s amazing.

“When I won the game and they came up and told me [I’d won the MVP], it was amazing — just to be able to say those words and to be here now. … I tried to dream it, and I tweeted it, and I kinda spoke it into existence.”

At the time of his tweet, Mahomes was a multisport athlete in Tyler, Texas, trying to decide what he wanted to do next. His father, Pat Mahomes Sr., was a Major League Baseball pitcher for 11 seasons and tried to talk his son into quitting football so he could focus on baseball, in which he pitched a no-hitter with 16 strikeouts in high school. In football, Mahomes wasn’t listed among ESPN’s top 300 football recruits.

But he chose to follow his passion, which he acknowledged wasn’t easy.

“I was never that kid [to go against my parents],” Mahomes told ESPN. “To me it was just, ‘Let’s just go try this football thing out. Let’s go to college and play it. I mean, you’re lucky enough to get a scholarship, try to see if you can make something of it.’ And we found a way. I got drafted to the Chiefs, and now, God, the rest is history.

“I just wanted to follow it and see where it took me. I still thought there was a good chance I was gonna play baseball, but I wanted to see where football took me, and I was able to go out there [and succeed].”

When asked what advice he’d give to his younger self, he said, “It was just like what I did — follow your dreams and not just do what everyone thinks you should do, but follow your dreams. It’s worked out, and I’ve gotten me to where I am.”

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SOURCE: ESPN, Jenna Laine