Young gun learning the ropes at QB

MORGANTOWN — It was Monday of this week and the first real summer heat was laying heavily on Mylan Park, where the Country Roads Trust football players from West Virginia were holding a camp for grade school kids.

The trust, of course, is a group founded outside the university’s control aimed at helping athletes from all sports to land NIL sponsors and this was one way they could interact with the youth of the community and get one sponsor, Diversified Energy, out in front of the public.

It was difficult to tell whether it was the kids who enjoyed it more than the players, who smiled through the sweat as they worked with the children and then signed autographs.After it ended, the attending media, who probably could have learned some things if they had gone through the camp with the kids, gathered around the star attraction, the one-time five-star quarterback JT Daniels, who had transferred in after performing until injured on a national champion team at the University of Georgia.

But at the far end of the tent that was providing some relief from the heat and scorching sun was another Mountaineer quarterback, Nicco Marchiol, and having watched some of his highlights online and spending 10 minutes talking to him laid bare why West Virginia football coach Neal Brown pursued the one-time 4-star recruit from Arizona so hard.Marchiol spoke of learning from Daniel, who was not there when he signed; of being a good teammate and of becoming a leader.

Unlike so many his age in this era, the talk was less about his football prowess and more about him as a person ... a young person who understood exactly where why he was at WVU, what the school could do for him and how all the acclaim he had gained on the road to WVU now was nothing but a memory.He realized that he was at a point in his life where he now would have to create new memories on a higher level and to do that he could not be the same player he was in high school.Noting this, I asked him a question that he took quite seriously.“It sounds like what you have learned most since getting to WVU is just how much you have to learn,” I said

.“That’s a great way to put it. Coming from where you have all eyes on you. You come here and you have three or four guys in the room who are just as good as you,” he said. “The biggest thing I learned is that I still have so much to learn.“I’m grateful I’m at a place like West Virginia, where they are willing to show me and teach me every single day.

I like to take it one day at a time, not looking past tomorrow and just keeping my head down trying to learn as much as I can.”It is an adjustment, although not the kind of adjustment you might think. We’re not talking about moving from the desert to the mountains.

We’re not talking about wearing gold and blue or even x’s and o’s.We’re talking about being the BMOC in Arizona and coming into a situation where he is just one of four in the quarterback room, the least experienced, not expected to start.

We all go through it but not in front of the prying eyes of football fans on the internet and media outlets of all sorts.“It’s extremely different than high school. You can only play so big a scale in high school. Being in Arizona, high school football is a big deal, but you get to college and the Big 12, it doesn’t get any bigger than this,” Marchiol said.“You are out here competing with the best of the best. Every day all the quarterbacks have to show up and prove we’re ready to work and put our heads down. It’s nothing but work.”

In Arizona, as a high school player, you are overshadowed by Arizona and Arizona State and an NFL team called the Cardinals.

In West Virginia playing at the state university is as high as it gets.“Obviously, everywhere I’ve been it’s been all eyes on me where you have to perform when you need to,” he said.

But here he can fly under the radar as he transitions up the ladder.“So much of college right now — especially for early recruits like me — is learning from mistakes and learning as you go on.”He buys into the situation, confident his turn will come but willing to wait for it to happen.

“With the experience we have on the staff and in all the player rooms, they’ve been very open to me and are teaching me what I need to know about college football. This transition couldn’t have gone better with the help around me.”He has a solid, veteran, proven offensive coordinator in Graham Harrell, himself in his first year at WVU but with credentials of having rewritten the record books as a quarterback at Texas Tech and as a coordinator at USC.

And then there’s Daniels, expected to start but willing to offer what he can to the younger people jockeying for position in the line of succession to him.“He’s a guy who wants to help you as much as you can,” Marchiol said.

“Whenever I want to watch film and he’s willing to be the first person in there teaching me. He’s been with some great winning programs in the past. He knows the x’s and o’s of football and knows the mental side of it and the coaching side of it, he’s brought some things to light for me that I’d never thought of before.“It’s definitely going to elevate my game.”The approach Marchiol is taking is one that seems to have spread through the entire team.“

Some of the players have said the biggest change they’ve seen in the team is that there are no individuals out there. It’s just a lot of guys with the common goal of being as good as we can,” he said.

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