Hough QB Ethan Royal eyes repeat title as Huskies reload with transfers
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Ethan Royal is a rising senior who led Hough to the 2025 state title.
- Hough adds six transfers for 2026, including Joshua Dobson and Davion Jones.
- DeShawn Baker is 37-4 in his first three seasons leading Hough.
If there’s any pressure on the leading man for the Carolinas’ top high school football team, Ethan Royal sure isn’t showing it.
Walking the hallways at Hough High School last week on his way to the football field for a photoshoot ahead of spring workouts, Royal’s shoulder-length burnt-orange hair bounces off his black No. 1 jersey as a big smile bounces around his face.
Royal’s noticeably bigger than he was in December when he led the Huskies to their first state championship and was named MVP.
And if nothing else, the 6-foot-1, 195-pound rising senior quarterback is determined to make sure that Hough’s success wasn’t just a one-year thing.
“Yeah we won,” he said, “but it was the first time. You’ve got to do it twice to make it official.”
But can the Huskies do it?
Mecklenburg County has had a series of repeat state public school champions in the past few 25 years:
Independence won seven rings in a row from 2000-06. Butler won back-to-back titles in 2008 and ‘09. Mallard Creek won three in a row (2013-15). Charlotte Catholic won back-to-back in 2004 and ‘05, and then won four straight about a decade later (2017-20). And Chambers went to back in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years.
Despite losing 26 seniors, Royal thinks his team is ready to join that elite list. Ask him what fans — and rivals — should expect from Hough this fall and that knowing smile creeps across his face again.
“Just another 14-0 season,” he deadpans. “Just an electrifying offense and defense.”
Inside the Huskies hopes for a repeat
Spring football workouts started in North Carolina last week, but many teams will begin Monday, including Hough. State rules allow for teams to continue sessions — which do not include full-out tackling — until late May.
For Hough and Royal, it’ll be the first time to get an on-field look at a team that’s undergoing a makeover.
With all the seniors gone, the Huskies will have lots of new faces in key roles. They will also work in six transfers who are attracting college attention, including former Catawba Ridge star Joshua Dobson — a top 50 national recruit overall and the No. 6 defensive back recruit nationally — and Davion Jones, a West Charlotte transfer among the nation’s top 15 recruits at safety.
Of course, getting that many transfers, particularly high-profile ones, has sparked a lot of off-season debate. Hough coach DeShawn Baker isn’t running from it or dodging questions about it.
“We’re not recruiting,” he said. “We’re coaching ball. We have a good program. We have a good school. We’ve got good academics. We don’t have to recruit and we don’t get paid enough money to go out and try to recruit anybody. It comes with the territory when you’re winning and people will talk. People are going to say what they want to say. But they don’t define us and that’s not going to keep us from doing what we’re going to do.”
Building with defense, planning for a big fall
In 2023, Baker took over a really strong program from Matt Jenkins that had gone 36-6 in three seasons and had been on the doorstep of the state final. Baker came in preaching toughness, defense and family. His players seem at ease around him, joking with him about “borrowing” his coaching gear and about his food choices.
And the Huskies play hard for their coach.
“You’ve got to make football fun,” Baker said, several times, during an interview last week.
Baker was a star running back at the old Waddell High in south Charlotte and later at S.C. State, where he was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame 10 years ago.
After college, he was an assistant at Hough for five years before he took a job at Concord’s Cox Mill High in 2021. A few years later, he came back to Hough where he has turned the Huskies into a bona fide national power.
Baker is 37-4 in his first three seasons at Hough, and he’s never lost a conference game. His 2024 team had a school-record seven shutouts in 14 games and allowed 120 points, the second-fewest single-season total in school history.
Baker’s 2025 state champions had six shutouts, second-most in school history, and allowed 93 points, setting a new single-season school record.
Baker became the first Black coach in Mecklenburg County history to win an NCHSAA state title. And he also thinks his 2026 team will have a real shot at a second ring.
“I think we can be really good,” Baker said. “We’ve got to coach. The guys have to buy in, and we’ve got to be on the same page. It’s a family atmosphere here. That’s what I expect it to be, and I don’t see it any other way. We’re going to argue. We’re going to fuss. We’re going to fight. But at the end of the day, family always has each other’s back, and that’s how it should be.”
The Royal equation
Ultimately, Baker said that Hough family will only go as its quarterback does.
And Royal’s confidence has never been higher. As you might expect from a state championship MVP in the state’s largest classification, Royal has run up two dozen college scholarship offers, including 12 last month.
He hasn’t narrowed down his choices or even really thought about where he’d like to play, but he does have a message for whatever fan base gets him.
“They’re getting a dog, for sure,” he said. “And a leader.”
Hough has produced its share of college-bound quarterbacks over the years. Drake Maye once played there as a freshman. But Royal, and his quiet confidence, is on track to be the best QB-1 in school history.
Royal is coming off a season where he threw for 2,272 yards, 29 touchdowns and ran for 721 yards and 14 more scores. In a 21-0 state final win over Raleigh’s Millbrook High — an unbeaten team coming in that had not allowed more than 10 points in a game — Royal ran for two touchdowns, threw for one and accounted for 224 yards total offense.
But for Hough to 14-0 again, and a state champion again, Royal said he’ll have to be even better.
His coaches believe he can be.
“He’s going to lead us,” Baker said. “Our team follows Ethan. The way he goes is how we’re going to go. Even though we have a really good defense, our team feeds off Ethan. And one thing about him, he doesn’t get too high or too low in the game. He doesn’t try to do something he has no business doing. So I think the biggest thing for Ethan is to just keep thriving and keep showing the team that he’s always going to be ready to go on Friday. And I know he will.”
