Coach Chip Hester photograph by Keith Tew/Barton College

Chip Hester had a vision. There were days during that long week back in September 2020 when the thermometer touched 90 degrees and the eastern North Carolina humidity felt thick enough to chew. Hester, the coach of the newly reestablished football program at Barton College in Wilson, drove one tractor and Todd Wilkinson, the school’s director of athletics, drove the other. Barton’s first class of 80 football recruits — including 31 uplifted by an improbable legacy they knew nothing about — worked in shifts to plant the sod for a field upon which they would soon practice as a team. Though none of them would put on a game uniform for another year, they were already Bulldogs. “Those guys literally laid the foundation of our program with their own sweat equity,” Hester says. “Fortunately, we’d recruited a bunch of tough country boys who were used to hard work and getting their hands dirty.”

The Barton College Centennial Alumni Bell Tower is a central landmark on campus. photograph by Keith Tew/Barton College

Many of those country boys had once harbored the same crazy dream: to be the first generation in their families to attend college. At Barton, they would become known as the “first gens.” Touring the campus, the entirety of which could be viewed from the peak of the school’s four-story bell tower, the initial question becomes obvious: How has this little liberal arts school with barely 1,000 students — on a campus consisting of eight blocks and zero stoplights — made such a huge impact? “It gives me chills,” says Ken Tyler, Barton’s vice president and current director of athletics. “At this place, you can use a brown, oblong ball to chart a completely new path, and those first gens are the proof.”

Which begs the next question: Why Barton?

• • •

Faith Searcy had a vision. She wanted her children to be the first in her family to attend college. She graduated from Hendersonville High School in 1953 and promptly took a job in the local textile mill, where she worked third shift alongside Emerson Searcy, another Hendersonville High alum just back from the Korean War. One Wednesday afternoon in October 1953, Faith and Emerson clocked out from work, got married, and then returned to the mill to finish their shift. Emerson left the mill in 1956 for a job at the new General Electric plant and moved the family to a small house in Mountain Home. Faith raised the couple’s four children and worked as a substitute teacher at Balfour Elementary School. “Mom knew it was unlikely that we would have a pathway to college,” says Doug Searcy, the youngest of the family’s children. “But she also understood the value of education and that if her kids wanted more opportunity, she had to take a risk.”

Faith and Emerson Searcy had every reason to be proud parents. Their oldest son, Brad, followed Dad’s footsteps in a career with GE, and their three younger children all landed in education: Doug (right) is president of Barton College, Mary Beth became a mathematics professor, and Cliff (in his 1977 football uniform) was an English teacher. photograph by Keith Tew/Barton College, Family photos courtesy of the Searcy Family

So one morning in the spring of 1977 — shortly after the Searcys’ oldest son, Brad, followed his father in getting a job at the GE plant, where their second son, Cliff, had worked the previous summer before his senior year at West Henderson High — Faith and Cliff made the 40-mile drive to Mars Hill College. “This was a dream of mine since childhood, and one I had prepared for physically and academically for many years,” Cliff says. “Mom insisted that we must ‘knock on the doors’ and let God open the ones that were meant to be.”

Faith’s faith paid off.

When she and Cliff, a 6-foot-3-inch, 235-pound offensive tackle, arrived at the Mars Hill admissions office, a call was promptly placed to Lions football coach Claude “Hoot” Gibson. Cliff was quickly summoned to Gibson’s office. “He [Gibson] was impressed with my size and the initiative I had shown, so he offered me a scholarship on the spot,” Cliff says. “I was walking on clouds.”

Football fans fill Truist Stadium to see their beloved Bulldogs. photograph by Keith Tew/Barton College

Football Saturdays at Mars Hill became a Searcy family affair. It was the first college campus that the younger children, Mary Beth and Doug, had ever visited. “As a 6-year-old kid, I didn’t know a lot about college,” Doug says. “But walking around that campus, I recognized that something important happened there that I was curious about.”

A decade later, inspired by his brother’s college degree, Doug earned academic and leadership scholarships to attend Mars Hill.

• • •

Doug Searcy had a vision. Hired in 2015 as the president of Barton College, he wanted to offer students a chance to become the first in their families to attend college through football scholarships. One teeny problem: “Barton didn’t have a football team back then,” Hester says. “Barton didn’t have a football field. I’m not sure they even had a football.”

The school had dropped its football program in 1950, and, 65 years later, it became Searcy’s mission to bring it back. He understood the power of Friday night high school football in eastern North Carolina, and he thought that energy could be translated to Saturday afternoons at Barton. “I’ve always felt a vitality and community engagement around football,” says Searcy, who played receiver at West Henderson High. “It brings together a bunch of young people and a coach with a goal to achieve something bigger than themselves. Not just wins on the football field, but a goal for graduation and a future. One of my critical selling points to our board was the opportunity to bring in kids from the area who might have no other chance of going to college.”

When Hester accepted the Bulldogs coaching job in 2018, there wasn’t much to sell. He would walk recruits to a parking lot behind the biology building. “I told those guys that this is where our game field will be,” Hester recalls sheepishly. “A lot of our initial recruiting pitch was, ‘You’re going to have to use your imagination.’ But I could envision what was possible.”

Then it was time to find some Cliffs.

• • •

Jaquan Lynch had a vision. He wanted to be the first in his family to attend college. He just couldn’t imagine how. Often during his youth in Rocky Mount, Lynch spent nights with his single mother, Shonnon, and his three brothers sleeping in a car parked at the doctor’s office where Shonnon worked. At Rocky Mount High School, Lynch, who started at quarterback, was a gifted athlete who generated no interest from college football recruiters because he rarely passed the ball in the Gryphons’ Wing-T offense. During his senior year in the fall of 2019, Lynch spoke to Army recruiters and took the military aptitude test. “I had no college football offers and no hope,” he says. “Until Barton came from nowhere.”

Lynch wasn’t aware that around the same time, Hester had visited Rocky Mount High to watch football practice. Longtime Gryphons coach Jason Battle had told him that Lynch was “the highest character kid” he’d ever coached. That statement resonated with a coach searching for a cornerstone upon which to build a program. Within days, Hester reached out to Lynch to offer him a scholarship. “I committed on the spot,” Lynch says. “It was a huge sigh of relief, like the world fell off my shoulders. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to worry about how I’d make it through the next day.”

Jaquan Lynch was the first in his family to attend college, and at Barton was among the 31 first-generation players to suit up for the 21st-century Bulldogs. photograph by Keith Tew/Barton College

Lynch started at quarterback for the Bulldogs’ first three seasons, from 2021-’23, leading the nascent Division II program to a respectable 16-17 record. During the ’23 season, Lynch was one of those 31 first gens on Barton’s football roster. Young men from little North Carolina towns from Archdale to Zebulon. From Jacksonville, Lawsonville, McLeansville, Reidsville, Rolesville, Kernersville, Beulaville, Whiteville, Statesville, Winterville, and Thomasville.

Young men like Edwin Fuentes Berrios from Salisbury, one of seven children of Central American immigrants whose father, Jose, worked the 3 a.m. to midday shift at a produce warehouse. Edwin never considered talking to his parents about college. Until Barton came from nowhere. At West Rowan Middle School, Fuentes Berrios’ assistant principal was Chip Hester’s wife, Trish, and their daughter, Tori, was a classmate. Attending his daughter’s volleyball games at West Rowan High, Chip Hester first noticed a large, charismatic young man leading the Falcons student cheering section, a kid who drew praise from Trish and Tori. By his senior year, Fuentes Berrios also attracted Hester’s attention as a tackle on the Falcons offensive line. “My parents couldn’t wrap their heads around it initially that Barton was offering me tuition money to play football,” Fuentes Berrios says. “For me, that scholarship was a game changer.”

Kameron Johnson made his mark on the gridiron, and is now pursuing his football dreams with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. photograph by Keith Tew/Barton College

Kameron Johnson began his football career at Northern Nash High in Rocky Mount as a 5-foot-5-inch, 140-pound quarterback. On the same trip that Hester first scouted Lynch, the coach noticed the small but speedy kid at Northern Nash who he could project as a wide receiver. Johnson had joined ROTC in high school with plans to enlist in the military because he had no scholarship offers. Until Barton came from nowhere. “Barton is one of the few places that offered me tuition money,” he says. “It was a no-brainer.”

Lynch, Fuentes Berrios, and Johnson were all there sweating through that blistering week in late summer 2020, laying the groundwork for the Barton football program in patches of sod. “Sometimes, when I’m out in the hot sun painting the lines on that practice field,” Hester says, “I can’t help but think to myself, ‘What is Mack Brown doing right now?’”

The Barton Bulldogs play home games in the brand-new Truist Stadium. photograph by Keith Tew/Barton College

There are plenty of reminders that this isn’t Division I football. The Barton football offices are located in a former Cadillac dealership on the edge of campus. Team meetings take place in the old showroom where Hester says it’s not uncommon for a film session to be interrupted by a knock on the door from someone inquiring about an oil change for a 1965 Coupe de Ville.

But the grand blueprint of Searcy and Hester has come to fruition on football Saturdays. Barton plays home games in brand-new Truist Stadium, where fans can buy a $3 Bright Leaf red hot dog with chili from a food truck behind the west end zone where the biology students used to park. An average crowd of more than 2,500 showed up for home games during the ’23 season, including Shonnon Lynch, Jose Fuentes, dozens of Kameron Johnson’s family members, and Hester’s father, Larry, who is blind but enjoys sitting in the stands listening to games on the radio over the regular train whistle in the background.

• • •

Cliff Searcy had a vision. He wanted to be a teacher. He graduated from Mars Hill in 1981 as a two-time all-conference offensive tackle, but more importantly to him, cum laude with an English major. Cliff returned home to Rugby Junior High and West Henderson High and taught English for 30 years. Doug and his sister, Mary Beth, a mathematics professor at Appalachian State University, each earned doctorates. Both Emerson and Brad eventually retired from GE as the longest-standing employees of their eras. Faith still lives in the family house in Mountain Home. Emerson died in 2011.

Fuentes Berrios will graduate from Barton in December with a double major in exercise science and sports management and aspirations to be a strength and conditioning coach. Johnson graduated with a degree in exercise science, a 5-foot-10-inch, 185-pound receiver who ran a 4.4-second 40-yard dash in the spring to earn a free agent contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. While at Barton, he volunteered as a football coach at Fike High in Wilson and plans to pursue coaching once his playing days are done. “Without the opportunity Barton gave me, I don’t like to think about where I might be,” Johnson says. “It has been a blessing that has no doubt changed my life.”

Coach Chip Hester has instilled a tenacious spirit in his team that’s reminiscent of Barton College’s bulldog mascot. photograph by Keith Tew/Barton College

Lynch earned his BS in psychology and currently attends graduate school at Campbell University, with plans to become a clinical mental health counselor, mentoring kids who grew up in challenging circumstances like his own.

Just as in the Searcy family, Lynch blazed the trail for his younger brother, DeAndre, to attend Old Dominion on a football scholarship.

“I’m just really grateful for the example that was set for me, by all the members of my family,” Doug Searcy says. “I’ve thought a lot about my family and our trajectory, and every bit of this mission is personal. But the story doesn’t end here. I think about what Cliff accomplished, and I wonder, ‘What will these 31 guys be doing 20 years from now?’”