The football transfer portal is not just reserved from those big three-letter conferences such as the SEC and ACC. A life of transition can be found at small four-letter leagues such as the Old Dominion Athletic Conference, and closer to home at Division III member school Bridgewater College.
“I think it is the reality of college athletics. That is my story – I was a transfer,” said fifth-year Eagles’ head coach Scott Lemn, sitting in his office during a recent interview.
From Kempsville High in Tidewater, Lemn attended Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, R.I., in 2003-2o04 then left the Naval Academy during Plebe Summer ’04 and transferred to James Madison, where he became a starter on the offensive line in his third game as a redshirt freshman against Delaware State. Lemn was a three-year starter on the offensive line and “a coach on the field,” according to his line coach with the Dukes.
“There is a right fit out there for someone,” Lemn said. “It (transferring) is an opportunity to re-boot, and that can really be impactful. We are open to it. You fill in areas where you can fill in the gaps” with key personnel.
“Mid-year transfers for us are a lot better. They get to go through an off-season (in the spring semester) and learn their teammates,” he added. “If there are players out there, we recruited prior and did not find the right fit … those are the guys that we get back more times than not. They went someplace else and then we became the right fit. Or they have a high school teammate who is on the team (at BC) and have had a great experience.”
Some of the transfers on the Bridgewater roster this season includes redshirt freshman wide receiver Davien Griffieth (William Monroe), who has Charlottesville roots and came from UVA-Wise; junior wide receiver John Snider (Parry McCluer), via Emory & Henry; junior running back Jalin Quintanilla (Turner Ashby), who was at Alderson-Broaddus in West Virginia before it closed down; and sophomore wide receiver Michael Shank (Turner Ashby), who was at Christopher Newport.
Snider had one catch in the first two games this season, and Quintanilla had one reception through the first two weeks of the season.
It works both ways.
“We have lost transfers the last two years they have gone up a level and earned scholarship money,” said Lemn, who was 26-16 in his first four seasons at Bridgewater. “That is the other side of it. The saying the grass is always greener on the other side is not a new one. Some are chasing the money.”
Former BC player Demarco Flemming is now a junior linebacker at Charleston, a Division II school in West Virginia. From Waldorf, Md., he was an all-ODAC performer for the Eagles in 2024 and made 49 tackles.
Kennedy Fauntleroy, who came to Bridgewater from Allegheny College, was a first-team all-ODAC running back for the Eagles in 2023 as he gained 1,386 yards with 17 touchdowns. The Baltimore product played two snaps for Wake Forest last season against Cal and is now on the roster at Tennessee Tech of the Ohio Valley Conference.
So that’s right – four schools in four years for the former Eagle.
Lemn is willing to deal with the upheaval. He has always coached at the Division III level, with his first stop at Randolph-Macon working with the defensive line in 2009. He became an assistant with the Eagles in 2010 and held several positions on the coaching staff in Bridgewater before getting the head gig.
“We have to recruit our own roster. Our guys can see past this experience, at times,” he said. “There is a little bit less lack of entitlement at this level. Our players have to do a little more for our program than what a player at Clemson does. We don’t get on a charter plane. Our guys are loading their own things on the bus. There is not a ton of online classes. They are eating in the dining hall with all of the other students. This level says, ‘I am going for the entire college experience.’ This is a great level.”
A few former Bridgewater players have gone into the coaching ranks, which brings a twinkle to the eye of Lemn.
Former Harrisonburg High standout Danny Grogg is the head coach at Broadway High, former BC recruiting coordinator Gary Ramey Jr. works with tight ends and running backs at Georgetown, and Braden Thomson is the running backs/tight ends coach at Catawba in North Carolina. Thomson, a former assistant at Shepherd in West Virginia, was part of the 2019 ODAC champs at Bridgewater.
Notes
- Among Lemn’s teammates at Kempsville were Sherman Logan, who played on the defensive line at Richmond; and Rob Rodriguez, a football standout at Christopher Newport who went into that school’s athletics Hall of Fame in 2013.
- Former BC head coach Mike Clark will go into the school’s athletic Hall of Fame, with a ceremony the Oct. 18 weekend that Bridgewater hosts new ODAC member Gallaudet. Clark led the Eagles to the Division III national title game in Salem in 2001, as BC fell to powerhouse Mount Union, 30-27. “He is a great mentor,” Lemn said of Clark. “What an incredible man to work for and with. You continue to draw on the lessons you learned as an assistant” under Clark, who has been an assistant golf coach at Bridgewater the past few years.
- The Eagles fell to 0-2 with a non-conference loss 56-17 on Sept. 13 at Susquehanna, ranked No. 4 in the country in Division III at the time. Randolph-Macon, at Bridgewater on Sept. 20, fell out of the Top 25 rankings by d3football.com after the Sept. 13 weekend.
Support AFP
Share
David Driver
