Nation’s No. 1 football recruit leaving Catawba Ridge for Charlotte high school

One of the best college football recruits in the country won’t play in Fort Mill next season.

Jadyn Davis, who this past summer was dubbed by 247Sports as the No. 1 college football prospect for the Class of 2024, is transferring out of Catawba Ridge High School. He is heading to Providence Day in Charlotte.

The quarterback will enroll at the North Carolina private school in time for the spring semester, Catawba Ridge football head coach Zac Lendyak confirmed to The Herald on Friday afternoon. The news was first reported by Tony Morrell, a reporter for 247Sports affiliate The Big Spur.

“I wish him nothing but success, and we appreciate all he gave to us the last two years,” Lendyak told The Herald in an interview. “We’ll be big Jadyn Davis fans moving forward.”

Davis is a 6-foot, 185-pound quarterback and a four-star prospect. He’s had SEC offers since he was in eighth grade and has continued to accumulate them. Among the most high-profile schools who’ve offered him a scholarship: Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Maryland, Ohio State, Clemson and Oklahoma.

Davis transferred into Catawba Ridge in 2020 from Providence Day — the school he’s ultimately transferring back to now — and changed the direction of the Copperhead program in the process.

Catawba Ridge was 2-8 in its inaugural season in 2019. The two years after that were much different stories: In 2020, with a freshman Davis splitting reps with a senior quarterback, the team marched its way to the program’s first Upper State championship appearance. And in 2021, the Copperheads went 6-5 and earned their second straight playoff berth.

Davis — battling injury and having to rise above the inevitable “overrated” chants that non-Catawba Ridge fans employed every Friday night against him — started nine games in his sophomore season. He completed 140 of 257 passes for 1,732 yards, 14 touchdowns and six interceptions.

This story was originally published December 17, 2021 at 4:53 PM.

Alex Zietlow

The Herald

Alex Zietlow writes about sports and the ways in which they intersect with life in York, Chester and Lancaster counties for The Herald, where he has been an editor and reporter since August 2019. Zietlow has won nine S.C. Press Association awards in his career, including First Place finishes in Feature Writing, Sports Enterprise Writing and Education Beat Reporting. He also received two Top-10 awards in the 2021 APSE writing contest and was nominated for the 2022 U.S. Basketball Writers Association’s Rising Star award for his coverage of the Winthrop men’s basketball team.