Clark Says New Tailback Is ‘Blue Chip’

The Daily News-Record | By Matthew Stoss

When tailback Darrin McKenzie drives by Turner Ashby High School on his way to Bridgewater College in August, it will be a familiar landmark in a foreign place, as he starts his freshman year as a BC football player.

But the reason it’s familiar isn’t pleasant – even if it did land Eagles coach Michael Clark a potential stud running back.

"He would have been a kid we thought we couldn’t have recruited because we thought he would’ve been recruited at a higher level," said Clark, who has collected about 40 recruits thus far for next season. "I think we’ve got a blue chip."

On Sept. 2, 2005, McKenzie was playing for Brookville High School against TA in the first game of his senior year. As a junior, he rushed for 1,064 yards and nine touchdowns and drew interest from the University of Virginia and James Madison, but both schools wanted to see what he did next season.

They just never got the chance.

With two minutes left against the defending state champion, McKenzie tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee on a counter play. It ended his season.

"That was it," McKenzie said by phone this week from his home in Rustburg. "[It was] upsetting. It just hurt me. The JMU coach came to see me play the next week, and I wasn’t playing."

A year later, however, McKenzie was playing again, this time for Hargrave Military Academy’s post-graduate team, and with a week before the team’s first scrimmage and his reconstructed knee healed… he dislocated his left shoulder. The injury ended not only another football season for the 5-foot-8, 190-pounder, but also his Division I-A or I-AA prospects.

"‘Not again.’ That was the first thing I thought," said McKenzie, who originally injured the shoulder in high school. "And then, ‘Why me?"’

Enter Clark. The 14th-year coach said he knew about McKenzie during his senior year, but figured he was out of BC’s league and didn’t actively recruit McKenzie. However, after the shoulder injury last August, Clark was waiting.

"At the time, I could see why he would take a gamble and go to prep school and try to recapture the senior year that me missed," Clark said. "Physically, he battled. It was a tough, tough situation."

And without that "tough situation," McKenzie said he wouldn’t be at Bridgewater, which finished 8-2 overall, 4-2 in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference last season.

The Eagles missed the Division III playoffs for the first time in six years. Their two losses were back-to-back to Guilford and Emory & Henry, allowing Washington & Lee to become the first team other than Bridgewater to win an ODAC title since 2000.

BC graduated 12 seniors – including all-purpose yards leader Winston Young and leading tackler Craig Smith. Smith, a linebacker, totaled 69 stops, while Young averaged 130.7 yards a game. However, the Eagles do return senior running back Phillip Carter, who rushed for 716 yards on 117 carries.

And while Clark said the Eagles are thin in the secondary, McKenzie, who has played defensive back, will start preseason practice at running back, where BC has added Shippensburg University transfer and Broadway High School graduate Seth Hardesty. Clark also said that during spring workouts, he experimented with sophomore running back David Argaud at cornerback.

"I think he has the speed," Clark said of McKenzie, who runs the 40-yard dash in 4.41 seconds. "He’s an athlete that’s going to have fresh legs when he gets here.

"We recruited him as a running back, but the thing is you never go wrong with speed. When kids can run, they find a way to be productive."

When asked where he’d like to play, McKenzie didn’t hesitate.

"Running back," he said. "[I like] that they run the ball. That was the biggest thing, and they were committed to it."

Bridgewater opens its season Sept. 1 at home against McDaniel College.