Hough sophomore Jarrett Nagy ‘little tough kid,’ energizes team on offense, defense

Hough High coach Miles Aldridge calls sophomore Jarrett Nagy a throwback football player.

“He’s just a good, little tough kid,” Aldridge said. “He’s a guy you would’ve found on teams 20 or 30 years ago. I think he would’ve played with no face mask if he could.”

Nagy, 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, doesn’t have a position for the Huskies (4-0), ranked No. 6 in the Observer’s Sweet 16. He just plays wherever Aldridge needs him to play. And Aldridge said the thing Nagy does best is “just play hard.”

This season, Nagy leads the Huskies in rushing (418 yards, eight touchdowns) and tackles (39). He averages 9.9 yards per carry and 9.7 tackles per game.

Nagy will lead Hough into Friday’s game at No. 2 Butler (3-1).

“Whatever the team needs me to do, wherever it needs me most, I’ll be there,” Nagy said. “I just want to play and help out.”

Nagy moved to Charlotte at the start of his freshman year. Coming from Cincinnati, he was used to a certain style of football.

“Most running backs down in the South are shiftier,” he said, “and since I came from up North, the thing up there is downhill football, beat ‘em up and see which team gets beat up first. If you have a passing team up north, that doesn’t normally work very well.”

Aldridge noticed Nagy’s toughness as a ninth grader on junior varsity. He moved him to varsity for the playoffs last year, putting him on special teams. This season, Nagy has played a more signifigant role -- splitting time with Rashad Williams at running back and playing several linebacker positions.

Heading into a big home game with Ardrey Kell last week, Williams was hurt and the Huskies were also down two starting linebackers. Aldridge planned to start Nagy at linebacker and hoped he could get one half out of Williams, who was nursing a sore knee.

At the start of the second half, Aldridge moved Nagy to running back.

“We tried to save him as much as we could the first half to get to the second half,” Aldridge said. “But after that it was a typical Nagy performance. He ran hard, broke tackles. Typical.”

Nagy ran 17 times for 136 yards and four touchdowns in the second half of a 41-37 comeback win. His final score, with 70 seconds to play, was the game-winner.

“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Nagy said. “The line was blocking great and making nice holes. I was just filling them and doing my best. I expected myself to play hard. But the touchdowns are not that important to me. It’s about the win.”

Nagy and Hough will try to improve to 5-0 by taking down Butler on the road Friday, and Butler -- a traditional state power -- rarely loses at home.

“Every game is a big game,” Aldridge said, “but sometimes they are for different reasons. Butler is an outstanding team with an outstanding tradition, so it’s another football game we’d like to play well in and have a chance to win.”

Nagy said he’s looking forward to playing in it -- like always.

“This game will be really, really important to us making a statement that we can beat a really, really good team,” Nagy said. “Ardrey Kell’s a good team, but we think Butler is even better, so we are just going to work our hardest and do the best we can.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 5:53 PM with the headline "Hough sophomore Jarrett Nagy ‘little tough kid,’ energizes team on offense, defense."