Learn the name Lucas Lenhoff. This high school QB in Charlotte is igniting stat books
The No. 1 high school passing quarterback in North Carolina has lived in the state for about nine months now, and Lucas Lenhoff is enjoying every moment playing for Myers Park High School.
“Man,” he said. “I just love it here.”
A year ago, Lenhoff was in Southern California. That’s where he grew up training with and playing 7-on-7s against name talent like David John Uiagaleleli — whom you might know as the Clemson quarterback nicknamed “DJ” — and Alabama sophomore Bryce Young.
But when the coronavirus shut down California high school football in the fall of 2020 and a spring season looked bleak, Lenhoff didn’t want to sit out. So, with his parents’ permission, he began looking for a place to play. He was looking for states that were going to play in the spring of 2021.
North Carolina was one of those.
Google was his friend, as was the fact that an All-American quarterback named Drake Maye had decided to leave Myers Park early to go play for Mack Brown in Chapel Hill.
There’s so much to this story — several of Lenhoff’s California teammates came with him, his college recruitment changed dramatically, he won immediately — and we’ll get to all that.
But right now, Lenhoff, 18, said the best thing about all of this is that he is getting to play.
This is his second season with the Mustangs, and Lenhoff’s 1,425 yards passing in five weeks leads North Carolina and ranks 34th in America. His 17 touchdown passes rank third in the state. Lenhoff has also emerged at No. 4 on The Charlotte Observer and News & Observer’s Mr. Football Watch List for the eventual state player of the year.
And he’s loving every minute of it.
“The environment is better out here,” Lenhoff said. “In L.A., there are so many famous people walking around and there’s so much going on, that if you see a (well-known) college football player, it’s not a big deal. People are used to celebrities — movies stars and rappers — and if you’re in North Carolina, and you see one of the top dudes walking around, everybody knows who he is. And L.A. sports fans are the worst sports fans.”
Lenhoff said he saw a different side of football when got to Charlotte in January.
The season started just days after he got here, and he had to meet new teammates and make new friends.
He seemed to fit in pretty quickly, throwing for 1,977 yards and 29 touchdowns in 10 games, the most of any Charlotte-area player, and he helped lead Myers Park to the N.C. 4AA state semifinal game, as far as any Myers Park team had ever reached.
Year 1 in North Carolina wasn’t too bad.
“Man, out here, it’s a community,” Lenhoff said. “Everybody knows Myers Park, and everybody knows Myers Park football. Back home, there are so many kids at so many schools, no one really knows each other. The whole community comes to Myers Park games. I love Myers Park. The football (fans) are crazy. I think we have the best student section in the state and playing in front of thousands every week is a great time.
“I feel like Friday nights here are the best nights of my life.”
The Big Move
Carla Lenhoff said it all happened so fast.
One minute, her son’s high school coach was telling the family that there was not going to be a football season in California due to the pandemic. The next, Lucas Lenhoff was searching for places to play, places that were going to have a spring football season and teams that had a good football and academic reputation.
He landed on North Carolina. On Myers Park High School.
Then, just as quickly, Carla Lenhoff and her family were moving 3,000 miles away into — into, well, the unknown.
“We were waiting for word from the (California Interscholastic Federation) and they never came back with what they were planning on doing,” she said. “And then his high school coach (Anthony Jefferson at Los Angeles’ Cathedral High) said, ‘It’s a wrap on the season.’ We had juniors who had all grown up playing ball together, and they wanted to play their junior year.”
Carla Lenhoff said one of the boys, Isaac Hill, had lived with her family for more than eight years. She said that Hill and receiver Cam Thornton and three other families all decided to move to Charlotte.
Carla Lenhoff and her husband, Steven, run a multi-million dollar company that does business in Las Vegas, California and all over the West Coast. The company, Graffiti Protective Coating, makes a specialized sealant that makes it easy to wash off graffiti painted on buildings.
Carla Lenhoff said there was not much thought about making the move or how far it was. Her older son, Neil, played for national power Sierra Canyon (California) High School. When the family moved to Charlotte, Neil and his college roommate at Claremont McKenna, one of the nation’s top liberal arts schools, moved into the family’s home in the Hollywood Hills.
A five-hour plane ride away, the Lenhoffs bought a home near Myers Park High in Charlotte that Carla Lenhoff said “needed a lot of TLC.”
“It’s not my first time throughout this process,” she said. “My older son is not playing ball anymore. I know how fast it can go, so it was not that difficult of a choice. I wanted to be part of the process and everyone does crazy things for their kids, and I felt like I was going to make this happen for the boys. And I have to be honest, (Charlotte) is a really nice town, and we were so locked down in Los Angeles and it was really refreshing to go places and see kids running around.
“And for them to be in high school and attending school right now is such a joy. I’m thrilled. We’re quite happy here, and Luke is really enjoying school, and I know I made the right decision.”
The fall and the call to come back
In California, growing up, Lucas Lenhoff was seen as the next big thing. There are dozens of articles and videos about him on the internet. When he left California, The Los Angeles Times wrote a story that Yahoo Sports picked up.
Lenhoff played his freshman season at Calabasas High School in 2018. He was a backup to junior Jaden Casey, who eventually signed with California. Carla Lenhoff said, at the time, the family lived close to where wildfires were raging in California.
“We had a home that was a freeway on-ramp from being destroyed by fires,” she said. “You could literally feel the heat.”
So the family moved and Lenhoff enrolled at Cathedral High in Los Angeles for his sophomore season. He threw for about 2,700 yards and 18 touchdowns in 11 games.
“Lucas was unbelievable,” said Cathedral coach Anthony Jefferson. Jefferson had a cup of coffee with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers in 1994. His son, Anthony Jr., played at UCLA and later played for the Chicago Bears. “One thing Lucas can do is he can pick defenses apart because he has such a high football IQ. He makes all the throws. He’s like a coach on the field. I hated to see him go, but I understand we were in a pandemic and we might not have played his junior year, which is the most important year.”
It turns out that Jefferson’s team did play five games last spring, and he said he did call the Lenhoffs and asked them to come back home, but by then, it was too late.
Still, Jefferson wonders why his former star quarterback’s recruiting has not taken off in North Carolina.
Lenhoff is listed at 6-foot-2, 195 pounds. He may not be that tall, but Jefferson thinks he’s a special talent.
“I have no idea (why Lenhoff’s recruiting isn’t greater),” Jefferson said. “He’s doing the same thing out there that he was doing out here. He’s definitely somebody that will be a diamond in the rough. Somebody that takes him will have found a gem. The quarterback position is so hard, but he’s definitely a baller and can definitely play at the next level.”
Lenhoff said he’s focusing on the season more than anything right now, including Friday’s home game with N.C. power Cardinal Gibbons, but he said he’s talking with coaches at Ivy League schools as well as Georgia, Hawaii, Oklahoma State and William & Mary. According to his 247 Sports profile, he has offers from Florida Atlantic and Mount Union.
“He’s not where he wants to be right now,” said Myers Park football coach Curtis Fuller, a former NFL player. “I’m talking to friends of mine (in college) and because of Super Seniors (granted an additional year of eligibility by the NCAA due to COVID), things have changed quite a bit, and then with the transfer portal. You’ve got people holding four or five scholarships for transfers and some pretty good players will go other places or drop down a division.”
Fuller believes that Lenhoff will continue to get attention, and offers, as the season goes along if he continues to play at this pace.
“He’s done a great job coming into the situation he did and putting up the numbers he did,” Fuller said. “As a 17- or 18-year-old kid, that’s hard. And a lot of the stuff you see us do, is what you’ll see (college teams) doing on Saturday afternoons. He’ll be ready.”
‘Im a surfer boy’
Lenhoff said he misses home a lot.
“I’m a surfer boy. I’m at the beach all the time,” he said. “I go to the beach to work out. I miss the beach. But man once I get on the field, you forget all that, you’re just happy to be there. I know it’ll be worth it at the end, and I’ll have a different journey than I ever could’ve imagined. I’ll keep pushing and keep working hard.”
Myers Park is 3-2 so far this season, but has jumped up to No. 4 in The Charlotte Observer Sweet 16 poll of the region’s top teams. And Lenhoff believes that is only the beginning.
“I think we’re ready,” Lenhoff said. “We started the season a little flat. Our team is good enough to go undefeated, but we haven’t played as a team in one game yet. When it does click, we’ll be the best team in the state. I have no doubt about that. We’re getting better every week and if we keep progressing like we are, we have a chance to win a state championship.”
Myers Park has never won a state title, and Lenhoff said helping to deliver one would be a great gift back to a place that welcomed a visitor from far away.
His mother, like her son, is waiting for the last chapter to be written — and like her son, she said winning a ring would be a great way to finish. And as far as suddenly picking up their whole lives and moving cross-country on a whim?
Carla Lenhoff wouldn’t change a thing.
“The story hasn’t come to an end yet,” she said. “I’m still waiting. I know the boys took that team as far as they have ever been last year and they’re happy, which is a great thing. There’s nothing better than a happy teenager. That I do know.”
