Why a top NC high school football player is transferring, just one week into the season

One of North Carolina’s top high school football players left a Charlotte private school this week and will play for his public home school Friday night, The Observer has confirmed.

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Elijah Littlejohn, a 6-foot-2, 205-pound junior, left Charlotte Christian this week and enrolled at West Mecklenburg, Hawks coach Beady Waddell said.

Waddell said Littlejohn practiced Wednesday and Thursday and would play in the Hawks’ game Friday at Rocky River. Waddell said West Mecklenburg is Littlejohn’s geographic home school in CMS.

“I have known Elijah since middle school,” Waddell said. “His mother was my son’s (assistant) principal in (middle school) in Gastonia. I’ve known the family for awhile. His father called me this week and told me they were coming to West Mecklenburg to enroll on Wednesday.”

Littlejohn had 86 tackles and 12 sacks last season for West Charlotte, where his mother worked, which made him eligible to play there under Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ rules. After he transferred to Charlotte Christian, Littlejohn was on The Observer’s preseason All-Observer team. He is a four-star recruit and is ranked No. 15 in North Carolina among juniors. He has offers from Alabama, Auburn, Michigan and North Carolina, among others.

He started school at Charlotte Christian about two weeks ago. The Knights won their season-opening game, 49-7, at Concord’s Cox Mill High last week. Littlejohn played in the first half.

Efforts by The Observer to reach Knights’ coach Chris James were unsuccessful.

Over the summer, Littlejohn transferred from West Charlotte to Charlotte Christian, where he was going to be one of the centerpieces of a Knights’ team favored to challenge Providence Day and Rabun Gap for a N.C. Independent Schools state championship.

Now he’ll return to the Queen City 3A/4A conference in which he played in last season.

“He’s really good,” West Meck coach Waddell said. “He’s the real deal. He looks the part an acts the part and he’s fast and physical and coachable and mannerable. I have a good relationship with him and he treats me with the utmost respect.”

As for why Littlejohn was leaving, Waddell said he wasn’t happy at the private school.

“He’s a westside kid,” Waddell said, “and I felt like he was more comfortable being on the westside. We have a relationship and he went to (elementary school with some of the West Meck players). He knows the kids.”