‘Practice makes permanent.’ How better habits, talented QB have Charlotte Latin at 7-0

A year ago, Charlotte Latin’s high school football team was 2-8 and finished the season with four straight losses.

So second-year Hawks’ coach Drew Dayton said he is a little surprised that Charlotte Latin is 7-0 this season and off to its best start in 17 years.

“You can’t predict 7-0,” said Dayton, whose team faces rival Charlotte Country Day Thursday. “There’s too many variables. What you can predict is practice doesn’t make perfect, but practice makes permanent. These kids have developed some really permanent habits that they’ve built from last winter through the spring and summer, and those things are showing.

“Now, when the game is in the balance, they’ve been able to rise to the occasion.”

Lots of players on Dayton’s team have made big jumps using that philosophy, but perhaps none more than sophomore quarterback Troy Logan, a 15-year-old who ranks No. 8 in North Carolina with 1,615 yards passing.

Logan has completed 65% of his passes and has 17 touchdowns.

Only one sophomore in the state has more passing yards: Tyson Broadway of Durham’s Southern School of Energy and Sustainability has 1,755.

“It’s just hard work, for all of us,” said Logan, who threw for 822 yards and six touchdowns in nine games as a freshman. “Starting off 2-8, it was a whole new mindset. The senior group instilled a more motivating, like energizing, mindset and we started off 1-0 and we just kept it rolling.”

Logan said by the time Latin got to 4-0 last month, it was winning against teams that had handled the Hawks pretty easily the year before.

The team’s confidence began to grow.

“It’s like, we can compete this year,” Logan said.

For coach Dayton, that was always the plan.

This is his second year as a head coach but his seventh year on the staff.

Dayton came to Latin after playing four years at Wake Forest and coaching 12 years of college ball at Lenoir Rhyne, Duke and Charlotte.

“We’ve got some highly motivated kids,” Dayton said, “and people that you just want to be around. They value community and they value hard work and they understand what setting goals and achieving goals looks like. It’s just been a huge blessing for me and my family to be a part of this community.”

Dayton said getting former Cannon School coach and former Carolina Panthers’ fullback Brad Hoover to be his associate head coach has helped speed up Latin’s turnaround. Hoover is full-time on staff at Latin.

Dayton is from Spruce Pines, a small N.C. town that was devastated by Hurricane Helene. Hoover’s college roommate at Western Carolina played with Dayton in high school.

“He and I know a bunch of people from the mountains where I’m from,” Dayton said. “Now, he coaches wide receivers and tight ends for us and it’s been such a big help.”

With all that coaching power and player belief, Charlotte Latin has gone from a team that scored 128 points in 10 games last season to a team that is now averaging more than 38 points a game.

Logan said there’s an easy explanation for that.

“I think in the offseason, we figured out that we had the pieces,” he said. “It was mainly just (a lack of) experience. Last year, a lot of times, it was our first time playing varsity football. I think in the offseason we realized that we’ve got the squad. We’ve just got to build a bond, build a program and go out there and play.”

Logan said embracing his coaches philosophy — that practice makes permanent, but not necessarily perfect — is a big part of his evolution as a QB, as well as his teammates.

“Last year,” he said, “(the game) really moved fast. My footwork wasn’t right. This year, I’ve worked a lot on trying to play fast in practice so the game moves slow, and I’m working on my footwork in practice so it’s natural when it comes to game time. And coach Dayton has helped me out so much with that. I go to his office during the day and we study film and talk.

“It’s really like extra practice.”