From JUCO Walk-On to SEC Scholarship - Ja'Bryis Stewart

By Mark H. Stowers

Football can build or it can break you. It offers the opportunity for success and has a way of separating the men from the boys. It gives and takes away in an instant. It can be a sanctuary and blessing. A way out and a way up. For one Trojan football player, the path to the gridiron came by way of another sport that normally runs around the football field giving notice to those on it.

Ja’Bryis Stewart ran track at Terry High School. He was fast and he high jumped an inch higher than he stood at 6-foot, 1-inches. His performances made an impression on a certain Delta area high school track coach who was also a pretty good football coach – Tavares Johnson Sr. Stewart was, no, he is fast. He didn’t set state records but a 10.9 100-meter mark helped set him apart. He kept running. The 200-meter and the four-by-100-meter relay. He high jumped and triple jumped and excelled on the track. And now, a few years later, Ja’Bryis Stewart put his name on scholarship papers to play football at Mississippi State University on early Signing Day. But there was a point in life after high school that the road to Starkville was a dead end, heck it wasn’t even paved or found on any map.

Martavious Brown was Stewart’s cousin. The two were thick. Brothers is how Stewart described their relationship. Even though Ja’Bryis had four siblings on his mom’s side and two on his dad’s, Brown and Stewart, in his words was “like a brother, for real, for real.” But Martavious Brown’s life was cut short at age 17 just before his senior year of high school. A senseless act that shook Stewart’s core. 

“It hindered me. It took me awhile to shake back from that. I still haven’t honestly,” Stewart admitted.

But Stewart kept pushing as best he could. Focusing on his athletic career, then assistant football coach Kris Thigpen noticed the fast runner and high jumper.

“I remember he was running track one day, probably around the time we were doing spring practice with some of our other guys. I'm like, ‘who is that guy?’ They were like, ‘Oh, Coach, that's JB. You know, he doesn't play football. He just runs track.’ I was like, well, he needs to play football’ because during that time we weren't very good, but we had some really good athletes at the school. And you could tell he had a great athletic body.”

Coach Thigpen moved up to head coach in 2020, the COVID year.

“And he came out for football and he immediately was one of our best players in terms of athletic ability,” Coach Thigpen said. “That was his first time, I believe, playing organized football, or if he had played before, it was maybe Little League or something. But he didn't have a lot of knowledge of the game of football, but he was super athletic and gift-worthy.”

Stewart was a raw player. Natural talent but without the knowledge and background of the gridiron game.

“We knew he could run fast, and he could really run away from people. I'll never forget, in our first game, our jamboree we had, we threw him a vertical route, and he ran by the guy, caught the ball, and out maybe the 10-yard line, he had a Leon Lett moment where he fumbled the ball. I think he thought he crossed the end zone and he didn't really. He just kind of kept running, and the ball was on the ground. We're yelling, ‘Hey, go get the ball, go get the ball.’  I think he ended up recovering it on about maybe the three, but that's kind of how his football knowledge was at the time.”

But one thing that stood out with Stewart.

“He had some great natural leadership skills, even at that time, because when he talked, the players would listen. When he would chastise them, they would listen. And so, we liked that about him even his first year coming out of football, even though he didn't know much about football,” Coach Thigpen said.

Stewart played both ways. The team didn’t win and Stewart was still fighting the depression and shock of losing his closest friend and brother. He graduated and with that weight still on his shoulders, he packed up and left town. Headed south to Florida and started cutting trees on power lines. He wanted to earn enough to buy a car. After about nine months of Florida heat and humidity, he had enough. He purchased a 2000 “brownish gold” Mercury Grand Marquis, a vehicle three years older than himself. A longing to return had also set in and he headed back to the Magnolia state.

“I was just so ready to get back home,” Stewart said. “I just decided to come back because I was getting homesick. I was already there longer than what I was supposed to be. I needed to come back home. Then I tried working in Mississippi but I was like, ‘this ain't what I want to do.’”

Coach Thigpen knew MDCC Head Football Coach Tavares Johnson Sr. when Johnson worked the high school level winning state championships on the gridiron and coaching track. Stewart’s speed was emblazoned on Coach Johnson’s memory. Another high school teacher at Terry was also a high school friend of Coach Johnson’s and mentioned Stewart.

The stage was set for Stewart to come to Moorhead and try out as Johnson was searching everywhere for talent to fill his roster. Stewart came and tried out and got an offer to walk on at MDCC. He took ahold of the opportunity.

“I came to the trial and I did my thing, and he offered me on my way back home,” Stewart said.

Coach Johnson knew he had a diamond definitely in the rough but it would be up to the diamond to undergo and survive the stress needed to turn potential into a treasure.

“I remember him during track season when I was coaching track at Simmons. I always wondered where he was. I reached out to some people who were teaching down that way. They put me in contact with him. I invited him to a tryout. He came in and ran a full five in. He's not the common. The rest is history. I told the coaches we're going to sign him. This is the kind of kid we're looking for,” Coach Johnson said. “He came in, he walked on, he earned a scholarship.”

Coach Johnson and his staff “had to teach him. At that age, they get so caught up with just playing offensive or defense. We were struggling trying to find a place for him to play because he struggled on the back end and lost any cover just because he had been out of football for so long. But the one thing that you cannot coach him is how to play. Aggression is key. And he has to be aggressive. We were able to find a position for him, really make a hybrid linebacker/defensive back position for him where he was able to play in the box and just play man-to-man when needed. And he did that exceptionally well. Like I said, the rest is history.”

Stewart didn’t know what he didn’t know. But he quickly found out and figured it out, with a lot of off-the-field work.

“I ain't gonna lie, it was hard at first because I didn't know a lot that the other guys had. I didn't know what a curl flat was. I didn't know hook to curl. I didn't know any of those things. It was really hard for me. But I kept going. I didn't give up. I had a strong support system. They kept me up in there,” Stewart said of his coaches. “I had to learn how to watch film and stuff like that. Those things I ain't never did before.”

Coach Johnson kept his eye on the hard worker.

“I told him, and he was also my special team captain. I told him, if you excel, I promise you, on special teams, that's going to get you noticed before playing on defense and offense does. And lo and behold, Mississippi State, when they talked to him, they told him, man, anytime you look at a kid that can block a punt on special teams and these are the exact words, ‘block a point on special teams and then can run the alley and make plays, that tells us that they are selfish. And those are the kinds of players, we want.’ It just validated what I've been preaching to him all the time,” Coach Johnson said.

This season, Stewart’s phone started ringing early in the season as colleges and universities noticed his play.

“The third week of the season when we played Hinds,” he said. “The FIU (Florida International University) was talking to my coach. And after that, Mississippi State brought me on an unofficial visit. Then when I was on an unofficial visit with, with Mississippi State, the man had called me and offered me the same day I was on a visit.”

Turning his Trojan red to a darker shade of Bulldog maroon was perfect for Stewart and now, the only color that mattered. Signing his name to a full scholarship has opened even more doors. He admits he grew up rooting for LSU and now looks forward to seeing the purple and gold up close in personal when he’s decked out in maroon and white. He credits Coach Johnson with pushing him to excel and go above and beyond and to make something better of himself. And he remembers one particular lesson.

“If you will excuse my language, but as he called it, ‘give a damn ability.’ You got to have give a damn ability. That’s what's going to stick with me.”

And Coach Johnson knows that if Stewart sticks to what’s he’s learned so far and keeps giving his all both on and off the field, the rewards will continue. 

“I know the NFL is looking for him.”

From Trojan red to Bulldog maroon to a possible NFL color – from the track to the gridiron, from the chainsaw to watching film and blocking punts, Ja’Bryis Stewart still carries the burden of his lost brother each step, pushing him to higher and higher heights.