Fall camp has concluded, and NC State’s football season is imminent. The team has been working hard in order to prepare for what looks to be a challenging schedule on paper. However, the typical stars are not the ones who have made recent highlights in this year’s Wolfpack training camp. On Aug. 14, head coach Dave Doeren surprised three NC State walk-ons with scholarships. The recipients were redshirt senior tight end Clark Eyers, senior quarterback Josh Taylor and redshirt junior linebacker Ford Howell.
This is always a great part of the college football offseason this time of year, as it is exciting to see hard work rewarded. Doeren has handed out scholarships to 13 different walk-ons throughout his tenure in Raleigh.
“It’s a true honor to be able to give them something like that, especially two seniors,” Doeren said in a recent interview with the North State Journal. “Clark Eyers and Josh Taylor have been here a while. They’ve earned it. They’ve both had different journeys to get here. Ford Howell is a junior college transfer who has played on every special teams since he got here. So I was happy to do that for them.”
Eyers, a Dunn, North Carolina native, started his collegiate career at Western Carolina University. After spending a year at WCU, Eyers came to the realization that he chose the wrong school to play football. He spent the next year playing for a community college, then decided to apply for schools without making football a priority. When Eyers was accepted to NC State, he initially had no idea that he would get a chance to give playing college football another shot. Luckily for Eyers, it seemed as if it were all just meant to be.
“I was applying to schools and I got accepted to NC State,” Eyers said. “It was actually going to be an academic thing. I just wanted to get closer to home, go to college and be a regular student. One of my coaches from high school talked to one of the coaches here and said I could walk onto the team. It all fell into place.”
Despite starting out as a walk-on tight end on the scout team, Eyers worked his way up to second on the depth chart at tight end and has a chance to crack the rotation and see some playing time.
“It was a long process, so it was really satisfying,” Eyers said. “All the hard work that I put in, it’s been a really long journey and it’s all paying off at the end. My goal is to play. I still have to put the work in, have the same attitude and do the best I can so I can get on the field and help the team out.”
Taylor, a product of New Bern, North Carolina, has been with the Wolfpack since his freshman year in 2013. Although Taylor saw a lot of success in his high school days, he was largely overlooked during the time of his recruitment.
“I got recruited by a lot of small schools, I had a bunch of preferred walk-ons,” Taylor said. “I wanted to come to NC State whether it was for school or football. Luckily they offered me a preferred walk-on and I jumped at it.”
After three years of hard work and dedication, the chance Taylor took on himself paid off, as he was awarded a scholarship.
“I had been hoping for it for a couple of years,” Taylor said. “I knew that [Doeren] does award walk-ons in camp often, so I was just hoping I was going to be lucky enough to be one of those guys this year. It was really great; especially I love it for my parents. They don’t have to pay for me to come to school. It was big honor, I am really thankful for it.”
Howell, who is from Memphis, Tennessee, had offers from a few ACC schools such as NC State and Wake Forest coming out of high school. He ultimately chose to play at Wake Forest and started his collegiate football career by redshirting his freshman year. Howell was soon unhappy with his decision and regretted not coming to NC State. The next year he decided to go to junior college for a semester, after learning that NC State did not have a spot for him to join the team right away.
“Once I found out they were interested again, they were kind of at the top of my list,” Howell said. “Even though I had some other smaller offers from places, I really just wanted to come back here because I wanted to coming out of high school.”
After Doeren contacted Howell’s junior college coach, he was able to join the Wolfpack as a preferred walk-on. Although at first it seemed as if Howell would be sacrificing his scholarship entirely, he put in the work and was rewarded by getting the last two years of his education paid for.
“I was kind of expecting it, but I didn’t know when it was going to happen,” Howell said. “So it was a good surprise. It just felt really good. It always feels good when you work really hard for things and then people reward you for it.”
Football is a very taxing sport to play both physically and mentally that requires ample time commitment. It is always good to see players getting rewarded for all the hard work they put in as they look to make an impact this season.
