Campbell football has never done this before. Meet the Sixkiller leading the charge
A Hollywood-named quarterback, a record-breaking season and maybe the worst rock-paper-scissors player ever.
This isn’t a Campbell football renaissance. The 19-year-old FCS program doesn’t have much of a past it’s trying to recapture.
This is a Camels awakening after years of wandering through the lower levels of college football, including the non-scholarship ranks.
No. 15 Campbell (7-1) travels to No. 25 Albany (5-3) on Saturday, Oct. 31.
Leading this unprecedented run is Braxton Harris, a Texas lifer guiding a team that remains undefeated against FCS opponents some 1,200 miles from his roots in Mexia, Texas.
His quarterback carries the surname of a college football legend and one-time Hollywood star.
Sixkiller.
Sonny Sixkiller, the original, was a dual-threat Washington quarterback ahead of his time who later appeared in the original “The Longest Yard,” headlined by Burt Reynolds.
Enter Kamden Sixkiller, who has never met Sonny but learned of their family connection because social media wouldn’t let him ignore it.
“I’ve been getting reached out to on Twitter since high school about (Sonny), so I had to go ask my grandpa,” Kam Sixkiller told USA TODAY Sports. “I think I’m his great-grandpa’s cousin’s son. I’ve never met the guy, but now especially more than ever had people reach out. He was a really good quarterback in the Pac-8, an All-American.
“One of my buddies sent me a video of Sonny in a commercial in Washington. I wonder if the name brought attention, but was it for all the same reasons as today? Was there anything negative? He definitely was a gunslinger.”
So, too, is the younger Sixkiller.
He’s thrown for 2,349 yards and 18 touchdowns against seven interceptions during Campbell’s 7-1 start, with the lone loss coming in a money game at Florida.
It’s the best start in school history. The seven victories are also a single-season program record, surpassing the previous high of six, reached four times.
Now in his third year atop the program and fifth overall at Campbell, Harris has made competition a program hallmark.
That emphasis grew out of last season’s 2-10 campaign, when the Camels lost six games by one possession.
Wrestling battles. Grip-strength tests in the weight room. Laps around the football field.
“We competed in everything we did in the offseason and posted the winners and losers in everything,” said Harris, a former quarterback at NCAA D-III program Mary Hardin-Baylor with 16 years’ coach experience in his native Lone Star State.
“Rock-paper-scissors, plate-press, one day it was who could do the most push-ups. Opened up the wrestling facility one day and let the guys battle. Everything was competition. We didn’t care what we were competing at; we just cared we were competing.”
Sixkiller embraces the competition.
There’s just one problem: He stinks at rock-paper-scissors.
“I don’t think I won a single rock-paper-scissors game,” said Sixkiller, whose first exposure to Harris was when Sixkiller quarterbacked McNeese State and Harris was head coach for a year at Houston Christian. “Competition is every single day, one usually before lift and after lift.
“I hated the rock-paper-scissors. I don’t know why I suck at it so bad. My strength was definitely the grip-strength competition.”
Fortunately for Campbell, Sixkiller has been considerably better at quarterback.
The Camels are one of only two Coastal Athletic Association teams undefeated in conference play. No. 17 Monmouth (6-2), at 5-0 in the league, awaits in Campbell’s regular-season finale, a matchup that could help propel the Camels to their first FCS playoff appearance.
Campbell is located in Buies Creek, North Carolina, about 50 minutes from Raleigh, in a tiny community of roughly 3,700.
Life there revolves around the nearly 140-year-old private university, which offers graduate programs in business, law, pharmacy and osteopathic medicine, among other fields.
This football season, though, revolves around continuity.
Campbell brought back “63% of our roster, including four of five offensive linemen, our quarterback, running back and defensive line,” Harris notes.
The Camels supplemented that returning core with about 25 additions from the NCAA transfer portal and 18 newcomers from the high school signing class.
But the biggest addition might be belief.
It began taking hold in the season-opening road win at ETSU, when Sixkiller led five touchdown drives of at least 75 yards.
The Buccaneers had pulled within 42-37 when Sixkiller scored on a 14-yard run to seal the game. But Harris points to what happened in the huddle before that final drive.
“We get up 18 on ETSU, they make it a one-score game in the fourth quarter and this team could have said, ‘Oh, no, here we go again,’” Harris said. “But there was never a doubt. They knew we would go down and score and win the game like we needed to.
“They were in the huddle before that last drive saying, ‘I bet they didn’t do bootcamp. I bet they didn’t run fifths. I bet they didn’t wrestle.’ We did.”
Now comes a competition Campbell hasn’t had much experience with at all.
Handling success.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Campbell football has never done this before. Meet the Sixkiller leading the charge
