Stone Bridge Grad Finds Happiness in the Hills of West Virginia

There are times when people make choices that don't work out the way they expected. And then there are times when you have no choice.

Ashburn's Devon Brown was a young boy when he was forced onto to the football field by his uncles.

"When I first started playing football, I was eight years old," the Stone Bridge High School grad said in a recent interview. "I got my equipment and my uncles were smacking my helmet. I didn't want to play football at all. Basketball was my sport."

But in his first game, after scoring four touchdowns in the first quarter, he fell in love with the sport. Not all of Brown's football decisions had those same results.

After graduating from Stone Bridge, Brown accepted a scholarship and played three seasons at Wake Forest University. Despite leading the Atlantic Coastal Conference in receptions with 61 during his sophomore year for the Demon Deacons, he found himself miserable and wanting a change.

"There was a lot about Wake Forest that I really didn't like as far as week-to-week, and it didn't really seem like anything was going to change from that standpoint," Brown explained. "I really just wanted to go somewhere that I thought I'd be happy."

He decided to head for the hills, literally.

This season, the wide receiver is part of the rotation at West Virginia University, taking post-graduate courses and using his final year of NCAA eligibility. Despite getting limited playing time, Brown has found happiness and peace of mind.

"Things are going really well,” he said. “We have a lot of playmakers and a really good rotation so things are spread out and evenly distributed."

After the Mountaineers' loss to Syracuse Friday night, Brown has 15 catches for 223 yards and a touchdown this season. West Virginia, now 5-2, 1-1 in the Big East conference, still has control of its own destiny in the conference.

Brown indicates the culture with his new team is completely different to what he went through at Wake Forest.

"We respect our opponents. We are aware that in any game anyone can win, but we worry about getting good at what we do," Brown said. "At Wake, it was more of us seeing what worked for other teams and trying to mimic that, rather than getting good at what we want to do each week."

Off the field, Brown is an Integrated Marketing Communications major, looking to get involved in the business end of sports upon graduation. The program is teaching him the basics of marketing and public relations and he'd love to use that toward a broadcast journalism career down the line.

For now, he just plans to improve on the field each week.

"You can never be satisfied no matter what," Brown said. "Running, catching, blocking in this offense. Receivers do a lot of blocking and you can always improve on that. It's the thing that receivers least like to do."

He says the adjustment to life in West Virginia is a bit smoother than he expected.
 
"These mountains and rocky roads is tough getting used to, all the hills and finding my way around has probably been the hardest thing," he said. "But the guys on the team ... things have been really great."

For now, rather than leading the conference in statistics or worrying about his playing time, the senior is just happy to be part of something that makes him happy.

"I know they had a lot of big-time players so I'd be competing for time with guys at a high level, so none of that really surprised me," Brown said of his time with Wake Forest. "I was pretty confident in my abilities, but I'm really excited to be a part of what we are doing here.”

[Correction: A previous version of this story did not indicate that Brown is enrolled in graduate-level classes at WVU and using his final year of NCAA eligibility. The story has been corrected.]