Pine Bluff Zebras Head to Football's Next Level
Tyrea Campbell, Rachon Crutchfield, Jorden Fields, Blake Hegwood Are Ready for College
“The time is 9:20,” a voice booms over the speaker at Pine Bluff High School. “Teachers release football players, and only football players, to McFadden Gym at this time.”
The Pine Bluff Zebras football team stream into the gym and take their place in the bleachers. Four decorated tables with balloons, jerseys and helmets are across the basketball court, where seniors will play their last high school game in only a few hours.
The hour belongs to Tyrea Campbell, Rachon Crutchfield, Jorden Fields and Blake Hegwood and their families, basking in a “joyous” day. This celebration of their national letters-of-intent to play college football is a dream come true. For the senior football players, this is one of the biggest days — so far — of their young sporting lives.
“It’s a most exciting time to see our seniors lift the sails of their hard work and travel into the destinies,” Pine Bluff High School Principal Ronnieus Thompson told me. “Hard work, motivation and strength is what all these young men have demonstrated. They did not sit by idly and wait for great things to happen. They seized the opportunity to be great and do great things. They are writing their own stories. We all at Pine Bluff High School are ‘Zebra Proud’ of this great accomplishment.”
But don’t think these four players are only focused on football. All of them already have career plans.
A big part of their futuristic mindset comes from spending just eight months with Coach Micheal Williams, a former stand-out Zebra athlete who returned to his hometown last summer to become his alma mater’s head football coach. Williams is a strong advocate for having a life game plan after an athlete hangs up the cleats.
While Campbell, Crutchfield, Fields and Hegwood are focused on football, they weighed their college options carefully with keen consideration for life beyond college sports.
Campbell heads to McPherson College, a private college in McPherson, Kan., where he plans to study business, marketing and sports management.
“I wanted the experience away from home and that’s why I didn’t choose in-state,” Campbell said. “But it was the best school for me with what I want to do after I get out.”
Williams said Campbell is one of the best football running backs in Arkansas, and Williams knows good players. He coached and watched a lot of Texas players. Early in the season, Campbell visited with Williams and told him he wanted to play college football.
“Tyrea was a very productive running back for the team,” Williams said. “He was a leader not only with his voice but with his play.”
Offensive linemen Fields and Crutchfield will travel together to Arkansas Tech University in Russellville. Both could have attended out-of-state schools but opted for in-state.
“I took football out of the equation when deciding,” Fields, who wants to study kinesiology and business, said. “I got the feeling the coaches and the players I talked to cared about me as a person.”
Wise beyond his years, Fields laid out his inspiring philosophy about how he looks at sports and life.
“You ask yourself how bad you want it and then you keep going,” he said. “There’s something like 83,061 seconds in a day. You make every second, minute count. You can’t just wake up and skate through the day.”
Fields explained that whatever you do in life, you have to spend 90 percent planning, 10 percent executing. You can’t execute without a plan. No way. No how.
“You just do it” Fields said. “Whatever it is. You plan what you are going to wear the next day. You lay it out. That plan depends on what the weather is going to be like. Then you are prepared and you just get dressed and go. But it’s planned.”
Fields learned a lot about planning from Williams.
“He told us everything is planned and there is a reason behind everything,” Fields said.
In fact, Fields, who received at least 15 college offers, has already planned his college career, figuring out he can earn both his bachelor’s and master’s degree in about four or five years. That is if he plans his time management correctly. No doubt, he will. Fields wants to be an athletic trainer, not a coach, because trainers spend more time with players. He plans to give back to the next generation.
“Football saved my life,” he said. “It’s paying for my education. It gave me the ability to see things I otherwise wouldn’t have seen. I’m taking advantage of everything that is coming.”
He said Williams “saw something in me I didn’t see in myself.”
“The future was right in his hands,” Williams said.
Williams said Fields, who only started playing football in ninth grade, was a “workout warrior.”
“He understands the grind and what it takes to get to the top,” Williams said. “Just a couple of years ago, he was a backup JV player.”
Fields will have his workout buddy Crutchfield with him at Arkansas Tech. Crutchfield plans to study industrial engineering. He said he looked at the college where he would get the best education.
“Arkansas Tech has one of the best engineering programs in the state,” Crutchfield said.
In January, Crutchfield had a big decision to make as several college offers headed his way.
“They were coming two a week for a minute,” Crutchfield said.
Props go to Williams, Crutchfield said, who turned the Zebra football program around in one season.
The Class 5A Zebras finished overall 5-4 this past season. Take this into consideration: They only won two games in 2021. But it wasn’t just winning that changed when Williams arrived on the campus. The “Zebra for Life” coach brought a massive mindset and academic shift to his hometown.
Instead of practicing at the end of the school day, Williams moved practice to 6 a.m. and created a two-hour study hall after school. Players had to finishe their homework before they left campus. Williams invited tutors, including retired teachers, to help students that needed more one-on-one time.
Williams, who is also a chemist, focused on grades in the classroom as much as he did winning on the field. Many of his players have 3.0 grade point averages or above including several players with a 4.0 GPA.
Every player who plays for Williams will tell you that he has changed their thinking. They all repeat the same thing: “Coach expects a lot every day.” And they don’t want to disappoint him.
“Every day” is Williams’ mantra. Players wake up and work hard when? Every day. Players keep that work ethic when? Every day. When do they work out? Every day. When do academics matter? Every day.
“You are doing something every day that is going to catapult you,” Williams told the players at Tuesday’s event that also included parents and Zebra supporters.
A walking example of this philosophy is Crutchfield.
“Rachon Crutchfield fooled me,” Williams said. “Everyone was talking about how he was lazy and wouldn’t work hard. Well, he was one of the hardest working young men I know and smart as well. He decided the school he is going to based on his major he is going to pursue.”
Hegwood, who likes “swag” and “drip”, heads to Arkansas State University in Jonesboro to study sports management, coaching, “something in sports”, Hegwood said. Williams said he worked Hegwood the hardest, going so far as to trying to get him to quit the team. But Hegwood pushed on.
“When he didn’t, I went to work for him,” Williams said. “Blake Hegwood is a kid I wish I had one more year with. He has the physical tools to be at Alabama or Georgia. He just needs someone to help him see it. I see this kid playing football professionally one day.”
Hegwood played Little League football for the “Little Angels” in Pine Bluff. He said he fell out of love with football at one point because of bad coaches. That’s not the case anymore, and Williams was a key component of pushing Hegwood mentally this year.
“He taught me to be ready for anything that comes at you,” Hegwood said. “Stay focused and be consistent every day.”
Because Tuesday was signing day, these four football players could have just rested on the solid assurance they were headed to college, and the day belonged to them. After all, they are seniors. They can see light at the end of the twelfth-grade tunnel.
But forget about these kids resting on their current glory.
Before sunrise, Campbell, Crutchfield, Fields and Hegwood were in the gym – along with other Zebra athletes –working out on their own, driven by determination and, yes, a higher calling to be the best they can be. This daily ritual, training for college play while motivating each other to take life to the next level, is about executing the plans they have in place.
“They keep that work ethic going,” Williams said. “This isn’t off-season practice. This is their thing that they do. That’s all on them every day.”
(Photos courtesy of Trammell Howell, president of Pine Bluff High School PTO)