Johnson C Smith (JCSU) football may have added another huge “brick” to its 2024 roster with the news that local Charlotte, North Carolina native and former 5-star product Quavaris Crouch has enrolled at JCSU.
While his status on the football field hasn’t yet been fully announced, a Saturday morning exclusive from Herbert L. White of the Charlotte Post, revealed that JCSU head football coach Maurice Flowers has confirmed the enrollment of the 6-foot-2, 237-pound Harding High standout.
Quavaris Crouch dominated both sides of the ball in High School, he ran for 3,142 yards and 31 touchdowns at the running back position, while running up 14 sacks on defense, en route to a storybook senior season at Harding High.
Quavaris Crouch at Harding
After winning both a State championship and being named the 2017 North Carolina Gatorade Player of the Year, Quavaris Crouch signed with the University of Tennessee and began playing linebacker full-time.
Crouch played two seasons with the Volunteers, racking up 85 tackles in 23 games before hitting the transfer portal in 2021 and heading to Michigan State, where he railed off 75 tackles in 10 games earning honorable mention All-Big Ten at the end of the year.
Quavaris Crouch in College
His breakout season at Michigan State was a one-and-done with the Spartans as Crouch entered the transfer portal again on April 29th, 2022, which is the last football move on record for the dynamic linebacker, that is until the Charlotte Post article confirming his enrollment at Johnson C. Smith was posted on January 13, 2024.
In April of 2023, a UNC Charlotte dedicated X account named Agent 49, posted a photo of Quavaris Crouch in Charlotte 49er gear on an Instagram photo of him on what appeared to be a recruiting visit, but Crouch did not play football in either the 2022 or 2023 season.
Possibly the biggest news in the report was written in the smallest print, as the photo caption mentions “He’ll play running back with the Golden Bulls.” Signaling the possible return of one of the best high school running backs in recent Charlotte memory back home to run the ball at the Queen City’s HBCU.
HBCU Gameday chronicled the Golden Bulls’ historic turnaround 2023 season in a Gameday Original docuseries “Brick x Brick: Changing the Culture at Johnson C Smith.” One month after finishing the season with a 7-4 record, the best at the school in over a decade, and earning a trip to the inaugural Florida Beach Bowl, JCSU is right back to building culture, adding an elite talent to the Division II HBCU player pool.
The addition of a former 5-star local product would not only be special for the city of Charlotte but would be one of the biggest moves in HBCU recruiting during the 2024 offseason.