Unfazed by history, Corvian Community’s football team charges to state’s title game

Who better than Chris Amill to coach Corvian Community on its historic run to North Carolina’s 1A state championship football game Saturday afternoon in Raleigh?

“I’m a guy from Ohio,” Amill said earlier this week. “I didn’t know all this history. I just know that we needed to prepare properly, then line up and play solid football.”

Corvian Community has done that very thing all season, compiling a 15-0 record and winning most of its game by lopsided margins. The ultimate step comes at 3 p.m. Saturday at Carter-Finley Stadium, when the Cardinals face a North Carolina small-school football icon, Tarboro (13-1) for the state crown.

But on its journey to the finals, Corvian Community has made football history:

▪ It’s the first school from Mecklenburg County to reach the NCHSAA football state championship from the state’s smallest size classification since the association began offering four class championships in 1959.

▪ The first charter school to reach the state’s football finals.

▪ The first school from outside North Carolina’s foothills or mountains to represent the West in the 1A championship since West Montgomery in 2016.

Along the way, the Cardinals knocked off Mount Airy and Mitchell County, the West’s recent 1A powers. Corvian ended Mount Airy’s 43-game win streak earlier this month, eliminating the two-time NCHSAA 1A state champions.

“I tried to tune all of that out,” Amill said of the first’s that Corvian Community has logged this season. “What has happened before, I can’t focus on. It’s about us winning.”

A winning history

And Amill, 49, knows a little about winning.

He was a part of a state championship team while playing at Cardinal Mooney High in Youngstown, Ohio, in the early 1990s. He later was an assistant coach at Cardinal Mooney during four state championship seasons.

He also knows a little about starting a football program.

Administrators turned to Amill in 2019 when they decided to revive the football program after a 10-year dormancy at Youngstown’s Chaney High.

Amill spent three seasons at Chaney and said he had the makings of a powerful team when he got the offer to move south in 2021. Two of his college buddies, Chris Evans and Andre Jackson, had settled in Charlotte and thought Amill would be the right person to coach the new football program at Corvian Community.

Amill couldn’t decide initially but said that when Evans’ and Jackson’s sons called him and asked for him to move, it helped him make the decision. His friends’ sons had been coming to Ohio for several years to spend time at Amill’s summer football camp.

“So on the day after Christmas in 2019, I packed everything I could into my car, and I drove south to Charlotte,” said Amill, who took the job as dean of students and head football coach at the fledgling charter school just one-eighth of a mile from Mallard Creek High.

That team he left at Chaney went 10-2 in 2022, but Amill had other matters on his mind.

“It started with the weight room,” he said. “The weight room would start the culture. Whether it was football players, basketball players, or swimmers, we needed to get in shape.”

‘What are hashmarks?’

Thirteen of the 36 players on Corvian Community’s first football team in 2022 had never played the sport before. Amill and his assistants, including Evans and Jackson, worked almost daily with the team for several months before the opening game on Aug. 19, 2022, against Mecklenburg’s only other 1A school, Christ the King.

“The day before the game, one of my players asked me, ‘What’s the difference between kick return and punt return teams?’ “ Amill recalled. “Another player asked, ‘What are hashmarks?’ ”

“We had been working on that every day since June,” he said.

“I looked at Chris and Dre (Jackson) and said, ‘We might lose by 80,’ ” Amill said.

The Cardinals did lose, 20-14, but they won their third game of the season and finished with a 5-4 record, thanks in part to a couple of forfeit victories. Last year, Corvian Community went 6-6, reached the 1A playoffs, and even won a playoff game.

Amill thought he’d have a good team this season, with a senior-laden squad that included Jackson’s son, A.J., along with Cam Johnson, Noah Best, Doug Quarles and Adrian Scott.

“Good teams have great leaders, and we have something special in this senior class,” Amill said. “They refuse to lose.”

But getting this far?

“There was no way to predict that,” he said.

Starting from scratch

Amlll might be relatively new to North Carolina, but he has heard the complaints from some, who say charter schools can recruit players from large attendance areas.

“That’s not how it works for us,” he said. “We had a quarterback from the area — a kid with multiple offers from FBS schools — who wanted to transfer here this season. He had to get into the admissions lottery, like everyone else. He didn’t get in.”

Most of the Cardinals’ standouts, like Jackson and Johnson, were at the school before the football program ever started.

“Every year, we start from scratch,” Amill said.

He said he knows his team faces a big challenge Saturday against Tarboro, which is in the state championship game for the eighth straight year. Since 2017, Tarboro has won four state titles.

“That’s an amazing accomplishment, what they’ve done,” he said of the Tarboro program. “I’m still learning about it. But we can compete with them — if we continue to do the things we’re supposed to.”

The Cardinals’ head coach pointed to a red rope band around his right wrist.

“We all wear these,” he said. “Our motto is, ‘Hold the Rope.’ Once everyone on the team trusts one another, they’re willing to hold the rope and take a chance.”

Amill said a big part of the team’s success has been the assistant coaches, led by his two buddies from Youngstown.

He said a key part of the football program is developing players into good citizens.

Last Friday, on the trip to Mountain Heritage in flood-ravaged Mitchell County, Amill took time to explain to his players how much the Mountain Heritage players and families had endured after Hurricane Helene.

“I wanted them to appreciate what it meant for Mountain Heritage to get back on the field after what happened,” he said.

“I want them to grow up to be good husbands, good fathers, good citizens,” Amill said. “Ultimately, that will matter a lot more than anything else we do.”