Story by Erin Jenkins
All the odds were against him. They were against him as an overweight kid trying to play sports. They were against him when he started his football career his junior year of high school. They were against him when he placed second in every high school wrestling tournament until he got to the one that mattered the most. They were against him leaving his rural hometown and 500-student high school in western North Carolina to attend a big-time college, like the University of North Carolina. They were against him playing not only one sport in college, but two.
The odds were against Noland Brown. Not once, not twice, but many times in his life.
“He just wants to prove everyone wrong,” said Robbie, Noland’s father.
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The sun beat down on a humid June afternoon in Bryson City, N.C., as the Swain County High football team started their first summer workout. The Maroon Devils were ready for the 2017 season to start up, and it wasn’t the incoming freshmen who were scared like normal. It was Brown, a junior, who was timid because he was peer-pressured to play that year.
“I picked it up because of a teammate who asked me to come play for his senior year,” Brown said. “So, I decided I would.”
Brown’s football career had actually started seven years before as a 5-foot-5-inch, 200-pound, 10-year-old. His stature made him a prime candidate to play as a lineman on his mite football team. But self-doubt started to creep in when his peers bullied him about his weight. He questioned if he could ever be an athlete in the future at his size.
“When he was younger, he was really heavy,” Robbie said. “People thought that meant he wasn’t very athletic, but little did they know.”
He played rec league with his dad as his coach, but he never really felt the passion to play during that time. So, he stepped away.
Robbie had been a middle linebacker for Western Carolina University; he walked onto the squad and eventually earned a scholarship becoming a two-year starter and special teams captain for the Catamounts. Because of this, Noland was no stranger to the game. He grew up going to camps at WCU and listening to his dad’s stories of playing college ball, but it never clicked for Noland like it did his dad.
“I think a lot of people know how good his dad was and projected him to be the same kind of player,” said Adam Jaimez, Swain County football and wrestling coach. “That’s not how it works. He was his own person.”
JV and varsity football coaches at Swain High pressured him to play, but his dad never did. If his son played on the gridiron, Robbie wanted it to be Noland’s choice.
“For me, I personally felt like it wasn’t worth it for him to play because I know the obstacles I went through,” Robbie said. “But if he decided to play, then I was behind him 100 percent. I always left it up to him.”
After years of coaxing from players and coaches, Brown decided to pick up the sport again and play his junior year. “It was just for fun,” he said. That fun turned into a talent. He proved he was an outstanding player without his dad’s legacy shadowing him.
As a 6-foot-1-inch, 300-pound, 17-year-old,he started at center on offense and nose guard on defense under the Friday night lights.
“I know it may look like he developed his craft really quickly,” said Jaimez. “But Noland spent a lot of time before and after practice working when nobody else was watching. He showed how hard he could work and gave himself a chance.”
Noland showed that craft one Friday night against rival Murphy High. He proved he was an aggressive competitor, recording five sacks and blocking two to three guys at one time against the top-ranked 1A team in North Carolina at the time.
“He has a knack for football,” said Neil Blankenship, Swain County head football coach. “In our game against Murphy, there were bigger and stronger people in front of him, but he got the job done. After that game I said, ‘Dang, he can play.’”
“Playing against Noland was tough competition,” said Hunter Shope, Murphy standout and current UNC teammate. “In high school football, every team has ‘that guy’ they scheme for and that was Noland for us.”
Brown was named to the Smoky Mountain All-Conference team his first year playing. This is when he started receiving notice from UNC’s coach, Larry Fedora. A year later when Fedora was fired, Brown was left out of the recruitment process, so he focused on academics to get into his dream school.
“He gave himself a chance with his grades,” Blankenship said. “I told him to focus on getting into Carolina and then if he did, I’d help him with walking on. He knew he was unlikely to play coming from a 1A school. They just don’t look at our kids.”
Brown had another phenomenal season his senior year, again being named to the All-Conference team. On January 25, 2019, he received the admission letter he was waiting for.
“One thing you always look for is a good academic student,” said Stacy Searels, the offensive line coach at UNC. “Noland checked that one off.”
Even after he received his letter from UNC, he wasn’t sure if playing football was meant for him.
“Noland had somewhat given up on playing until I got a call from Sparky Woods one night,” Blankenship said.
Woods is the senior advisor to current UNC coach Mack Brown.
“I was on a date with my girlfriend and Coach Blankenship called me,” Brown remembered. “He told me a coach from Carolina wanted to talk. I went on the date, took her home and was thinking the whole time about this phone call.”
Brown was expecting the call, but not what happened next.
“I got home and was nervous waiting for him to call me,” he said. “So, I decided to call him first. Something happened, and I accidentally FaceTimed him.”
As Brown was trying to hang up, Woods hopped on the video call.
“Hey Noland,” Woods said. “I usually only FaceTime my grandkids, but this is OK, too.”
With his cheeks rosy from embarrassment, Brown talked with Woods for hours on FaceTime in his living room. The conversation resulted in a spot as a preferred walk-on.
“Sparky said ‘I’ll tell you what Noland, I’m gonna go ahead and put you on the roster,’” Tavish, Noland’s mother, remembered. “When it’s that easy and everything falls into place, you know it’s the right thing to do. He had been dreaming of that moment since he was little.”
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He was an infant laying in his crib with a diaper on, and tears streaming from his baby blue eyes. His arms in the air waiting for his dad to pick him up and save him from his nightmares.
“It was one of those moments,” Robbie said. “He was teared up and scared. I saw the doubt in his eyes. It was like when he was a little baby wanting me to pick him up, but he was reaching up to me in the crowd. I wanted to hold him like I used to, but I knew he was prepared for that moment.”
Preparation for that moment had started six years earlier when Brown began wrestling in the 6th grade because his dad said he wasn’t allowed to sit on the couch and play video games all day.
“I remember him coming home from his first practice,” Noland’s mother said. “He was soaking wet from head to toe. I thought he had jumped in the river somewhere. Nope, he was just drenched with sweat.”
As that season went on, the same chubby kid who shied away from football because of his weight, lost 54 pounds from beginning to end of the wrestling year. The next season, he won the middle school state championship by default because there were no other heavyweight wrestlers in the tournament. Then as an 8th grader he won the conference and placed third in the state championship.
“His last year of middle school he was having to wrestle high schoolers because there weren’t other bigger kids his age,” Robbie said. “He was in rotation with a varsity guy that won state two times and he wasn’t able to pin Noland. I thought to myself, for a two-time state champ not to be able to pin a middle schooler, he was gonna be good.”
These three years of training set him up perfectly to be the starting heavyweight competitor on the varsity team.
“The end of his junior year, he qualified for the state tournament and didn’t have a very good showing,” said Jaimez, Swain High head wrestling coach. “He was watching everybody else wrestle and he realized there wasn’t a lot that separated him from the kids that were on the podium. Other than the fact that he needed to believe in himself.”
This learning experience helped propel Brown into his senior year, but even then, he was against tough competition and had to prove he was the best. He finished his senior season with a 34-4 record. Those four losses came at critical points in the season.
“He would win every conference match,” Tavish said. “But every major tournament he went to, he would get to the final round for first place and get beat.”
“He won a lot of matches because he was stronger, but he wasn’t in shape yet,” his father said. “He lost four matches in championship rounds and I’m glad he lost those. I didn’t want him to go undefeated until it mattered. He got a chance to pay those guys back.”
Brown was devastated at the losses and had to get back on the winning track.
“One Sunday I went to the altar after the Osley B. Saunooke tournament,” he remembered. “I just broke down and prayed, ‘God, why am I not able to put it together and just win?’ My pastor was also one of my wrestling coaches and he told me this trial was going to turn into a blessing. I didn’t believe him then.”
Robbie saw the frustration. “I would normally just go pick him up from practice until one day I decided to go watch,” he said. “I saw there wasn’t any competition for him, so I started going to practice every day to wrestle against him.”
Noland and Robbie were wrestling partners for the remainder of the season. They stayed after practice training to ensure that he was better conditioned than all of his opponents.
When the conference tournament came around, Brown won. Then he won the regional tournament by defeating Hudson Boone, the opponent who put him on his knees at church and robbed him of a championship in the Saunooke tournament earlier that year.
Two weeks after regionals, Brown walked through a tunnel of pom-poms held by his peers at Swain High. He hopped on the white activity bus and waved behind him as the sheriff’s car siren blared and blue light flashed going through the small town of Bryson City on his way to the state tournament in Greensboro.
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Brown won his first match 4-0 on one of the ten mats packed into the Greensboro Coliseum. He wasn’t satisfied.
“I won, but it shouldn’t have been that close,” Brown said. “Coach Jaimez told me I needed to pick it up or I was going to lose.”
“Once you reach that stage, just winning is not going to be enough,” Jaimez said. “Everyone there is talented. Noland wanted to do something great that year, so he needed to step it up.”
He sunk into a rhythm and won his semifinal match by pin in the third period. This win sent him to the long-awaited championship match against the same guy that dropped him into the loser’s bracket of the state championship the year before; Javon Armstrong.
The nerves set in. He reached up to his dad in the stands, but this time, there were no nightmares, it was only his dreams he was chasing after.
Before action started on the mat, he walked in the parade of champions. He and Armstrong circled the arena, shoulder to shoulder with fans cheering around them.
“Everybody thought he [Armstrong] would win,” Noland said. “The odds were against me, but I walked around confidently. I felt small but also so proud to be there. It was a wild feeling, knowing I was getting to do the thing I dreamed about since I was little. I was ready to go.”
The match began and the two stalked around in circles, bobbing up and down like a merry-go- round. Brown had the advantage throughout the match. Earning an early few points for gaining control over Armstrong. At the end of the second period, Brown suffered a bloody nose. The trainers wrapped black tape around his head like a constricting boa cutting off his airflow.
As the seconds on the clock were dwindling in the third period, Armstrong made his last attempt to take the advantage by diving for Brown’s legs. Brown turned his opponent’s jab into two points by gaining possession on Armstrong’s back. Seconds later, the whistle blew while Brown still had control over Armstrong and now, the championship. He won by a 9-3 decision.
Brown’s arm was raised with an exuberant smile on his face.
“It was,” he paused to reflect, “probably the most surreal thing. That’s the one moment I’ve thought about while I’ve been at practice. While I’ve been doing homework. While I’ve been showering. It’s finally like there you do it and there is a high of emotions.”
The moments after that arm raise included his family screaming and crying tears of joy. Hugging and picking Coach Jaimez up off the ground. Grinning from ear to ear with blood all over his face. Being named the 1A Most Valuable Wrestler. Being welcomed as the hometown hero. Walking in the honorary state championship parade through town in Bryson City with family, teachers, friends and all of his hometown fans in the streets chanting, “Noland! Noland!”
“Knowing he had done it,” his father said tearing up. “Knowing people made fun of him for being heavier. Knowing people didn’t believe in him to the point that he doubted himself. Knowing that he went through all that and then won out in a sport that is 100 percent individualistic. Wow.”
“I was so happy,” Noland said. “But I had to figure out the next thing I wanted to do. I wanted to try and wrestle and play football at the University of North Carolina.”
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It’s no coincidence that when Noland Brown walked into the Kenan Football Center on his recruiting visit, his soon to be O-line coach, Stacy Searels, got him on the ground to wrestle.
“I had just won state and he had heard about it,” Brown said. “He said, ‘I’m a 1981 heavyweight champion myself.’”
Seconds later he was grappling on the lobby floor with Searels. This was the first indication that Noland was encouraged to play both sports at Carolina.
“He asked me if he could go out in the winter for wrestling if he played football,” said Searels. “I said ‘Hell yeah.’ It’ll be hard, and he might want to quit, but I told him to go for it. Guys that wrestle in high school are tougher, better conditioned and mentally tough. To be a UNC athlete you have to be mentally tough, especially being a two-sport athlete.”
Brown decided to go for it. He had finished his senior year in high school throwing shot put and discus on the track and field team, while also lifting in preparation for Division I football and wrestling. He had earned the Athlete of the Year award in Swain County. He was on track to make history by becoming the first athlete from the county to play two sports at a D-I university. He had all the momentum going into the summer for what ended up being the hardest part of his journey.
“I hit my low during football training camp,” Brown said. “It was a big change of scenery. Practice all day, every day. It was tough.”
Robbie and Tavish visited him in the middle of the two-week long camp to bring Noland encouragement; Little Debbie Cakes, Doritos and Cokes. But he could only take the encouragement with him, as the snacks weren’t in his new diet. He knew he had to be tough.
“I wanted to make my family proud,” Brown said. “I didn’t want to be one of those guys that came back after a week.”
He stuck it out and is now living the hectic life of a two-sport athlete while also studying psychology at UNC. At first, he doubted his abilities to play both sports in college, but the first game in his Carolina blue uniform dissolved those hesitations.
“After they beat Miami, he called me,” Robbie said. “‘Dad, I think I’m gonna stick it out five years.’ He experienced the tunnel, the student section, the win. It convinced him that all the early mornings, all the hard work was worth it.”
“When I walked out of the tunnel for the first time at Kenan,” Noland said. “It was just a feeling of, ‘Wow, I am actually doing this.’”
Searels believes Noland is excelling on both teams and will be a contributor at UNC. He played both sports his freshman year. And specializing as an offensive lineman on the football team, he spent his first year blocking against the starting defensive linemen at practice.
“The thing I really like about Noland is his consistency,” Searels said. “He’s early to work every day and he stays after. This year he went against our starters Aaron Crawford and Jason Strowbridge. He made them better and will be where they are in a couple years.”
He missed Christmas with his family to go to the Military Bowl in Annapolis, Maryland this season and upon returning started training for wrestling.
Brown competed in four matches at the Newberry Open with the UNC wrestling team before the season was cut short due to COVID-19.
“He did really well for somebody who had never wrestled collegiate before,” Robbie said. “His teammates and coaches told him beforehand that newcomers like him may win one or no matches their first time.”
Brown won two, surpassing the expectations set in front of him.
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It’s pouring rain on an April morning at the Brown residence. A soaked Noland is in the front yard running sprints with rainwater and sweat dripping off of him.
“He doesn’t quit,” Robbie said as he watched his son complete his at-home workout for football during the Coronavirus.
Brown’s normal routine on that Tuesday in Chapel Hill would have been waking up at 5 a.m. to workout, attend team meetings, practice, go to class, complete homework in tutoring sessions, throw in a couple meals, then repeat the next day. Instead, he’s home reminiscing about his first year and what it took to get him there.
“Where would I be and what would be doing if I wasn’t playing two sports at Carolina?” Brown said. “There are certain naysayers that thought I was just gonna come back home. That I wasn’t going to be able to do both sports with school, too. But I’ve done it and I’ll continue to do it.”
Looking back, even his family wasn’t completely convinced.
“From the beginning I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea playing both with schoolwork,” Tavish said. “Robbie reminded me it was up to him and if he wanted to, he could.”
“I was worried because I knew the workload,” said Brooklyn, his sister who is a senior at UNC. “But, I’ve never seen him give up on anything he truly loved, so I knew he would find a way to make it work, and he has.”
His roommate and football teammate, Shope, sees the behind-the-scenes hard work.
“What people on the outside don’t see is that Noland’s Spanish assignments don’t finish themselves at 1 a.m. because he’s been busy practicing all day,” he said. “But he’s not a quitter. He gets it done with all his other responsibilities. He balances both sports because he loves both sports.”
The trend of proving his worth won’t stop now that he’s reached his goals.
“He didn’t get a scholarship to play football,” Robbie said. “He was a preferred walk-on, which is awesome. But, he wants to prove his coaches wrong and show them he’s better than they thought he was.”
Sometimes the odds are stacked up, like they’ve been against Brown his whole life. He’s no longer the chubby kid with a head-full of curly hair who was made fun of his whole childhood. He’s now muscled up with a clean haircut. He’s the one person that athletes back home in Swain County look up to and dream to be like. He’s the person who never let the odds keep him from competing, winning or being who he was meant to be.
“All my life, I’ve been written off,” Noland said. “I’ve never been the most athletic looking guy. I’ve never been the guy that was supposed to win. I’ve never been the guy that was supposed to play sports in college. But now, I’m not just a student at Carolina, I’m an athlete too. I just want to prove people wrong. And I think I’ve accomplished that.”
