By Greg Thomas
D3football.com
Brevard College has been a Division III program since 2017. In nine seasons at this level, the Tornados had never started a year like this one.
The school is in western North Carolina, closer to Atlanta than to Greensboro. Brevard has been a four-year school for only 30 years. As of this year, Brevard has spent more time in Division III than it did in Division II, which it called home for eight years after transitioning from the NAIA.
And Year Nine in Division III has been a good one. The Tornados are 5-0. They are averaging 267.2 rushing yards per game, good for 11th in the country. They are outscoring opponents by 29.4 points per game. The defense ranks 26th nationally in total yards allowed and ranks fifth on third down.
This is not a team that stumbled into a record; it is a team that has been built to sustain one. Bill Khayat has been here for all of it.
The head coach who guided Brevard through its Division III transition is quick to credit the administration for providing the infrastructure that made this kind of start possible. Expanded facilities, upgraded practice space, the resources a program needs to compete. But when he talks about what actually changed this year, he goes somewhere else.
“I needed the right great coaches, meaning the right great coaches for Brevard,” Khayat said. “That’s what I feel like I have this year in the leadership team that really, truly understands the needs of the players and puts them in the best position to succeed on the field by utilizing their skill sets correctly. More than having a scheme and plugging a player into a scheme, it’s about what a player does well and how can we highlight that on the field?”
The roster that arrived in August gave that staff something to work with. In Division III, coaches have no access to players between the end of spring ball and the start of fall camp. In past years, Khayat used training camp and the non-conference schedule to get his team into shape.
“Finally, I have a roster of guys who took it upon themselves to make sure they did everything they needed to do prior to arrival,” he said. “In years past, I’ve had to use training camp and the non-conference schedule just to get these kids in shape to play a football game. And by that time you’re 1-2, or 0-3. This year was the best group of guys I’ve had in 10 football seasons in how they prepared.”
The conditioning was one thing. The culture shift was another.
“In years past, there were so many players that were excellent players. You can look up how many players of the week, how many statistical leaders. But the guys were playing for stats, and they weren’t playing for the team. Now you see guys who don’t care what stat they have at the end of the game. They just want to know that we’ve won. That has been the biggest difference I’ve seen in my years here.”
Junior captain Zion Fauntleroy-McDaniel felt it the moment camp opened. “I feel like this year everybody has the same goal, the same want-to. Everybody just trusts each other. I can look around the locker room and the vibe is just different this year. Everybody wants to go 1-0 every week, because that’s going to let us meet our goal.”
The numbers Fauntleroy-McDaniel and freshman Marvin Reed, Jr. have put up through five games are almost identical. Fauntleroy-McDaniel: 56 carries, 480 yards, 8.6 yards per carry, four touchdowns. Reed: 70 carries, 484 yards, 6.9 yards per carry, nine touchdowns, seven of them coming in the last two games. Together they account for 964 of Brevard’s rushing yards and 72 percent of the team’s ground production.
Khayat doesn’t throw freshmen into the varsity mix immediately. He lets them find their footing against their peers first, then integrates them gradually as the trust factor builds. For Reed, that process worked exactly as designed.
“I feel like it was a little different coming in,” Reed said. “I didn’t know it was going to be so slow getting reps with the older guys. But it gave me a good opportunity to ease into it, not giving me a heavy load. I feel like the coaches and the players did a good job of just easing me into the program so I have a good grip, like I do right now.”
Once Reed earned his way into the varsity rotation, Khayat saw what he expected. “You slowly integrate him into the system, allow him to have a play and then see what happens. If anything, the game elevated. A lot of times when you get around people that are really good, you elevate your game because you want to be as good as the rest of those people out there. And that’s what Marvin has done.”
Fauntleroy-McDaniel, for his part, is learning from the freshman as much as the freshman is learning from him. “I see some of the reads he is making, how he makes people miss in open field, the hard running. When I see him run, it just makes me want to run even harder.”
Reed knows exactly what he’s getting from the other side of that exchange. “Zion just leads by example. He really drives me to be a better player on and off the field; keeping an image, making sure people can look at me and be like, ‘Oh, he’s a freshman, but he’s doing the right thing.’ He makes the offense a little easier to read, gives me tips at practice, on the bus. Just helping me any way he can.”
Khayat had a simple way of measuring Fauntleroy-McDaniel’s standard before the season started. In spring evaluations, he tracks effort and consistency across every drill. “Never before have I had a player that had all pluses with zero negatives. Zion was the first one to do that in 10 springs. That tells you a little bit about the character of the man, and that’s what we want representing us on that football field.”
The rushing numbers and the scoring margin get the attention. The defense is why the record is clean.
Khayat found his answer at defensive coordinator in an unlikely place. In the USFL’s Pittsburgh Maulers, where he’d spent two seasons watching Jarren Horton call defense from the booth. He brought Horton to Brevard, and the results have been immediate.
“The defense will win the championships, and it doesn’t matter how many points you can score offensively. I wanted to find the best defensive coordinator I could get.”
Horton’s unit is holding opponents to 251 yards and 11.2 points per game and they are fifth in the country on third down. “What he brought to these players, understanding how all 11 men on the field fit together to present the perfect picture on defense. These guys bought into what the coach had. They’re just excited to play for him.”
The schedule to this point has been manageable. Brevard beat Division II Erskine on the road and dismantled Belhaven 51-8, but nobody is going to hand them a conference title based on five weeks of work.
Defending USA South champion LaGrange comes to Brevard this Saturday. Huntingdon follows the week after. The Tornados have done everything right so far. They’ve never been here before, but of course neither has anyone else who had to stop a 5-0 Brevard team.