Leaving Leechburg early wasn’t easy, but Braylan Lovelace didn’t want to wait to wear the Pitt jersey
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Braylan Lovelace has been a Pitt freshman football player for a little more than a month, but he said he already is “bought in” to the expectations.
Lovelace, a former Leechburg linebacker, knows the buy-in requires hard work and learning the many designs and coverages crafted by coach Pat Narduzzi and defensive coordinator Randy Bates.
Lovelace has played the game most of his life, so the transition to college won’t be easy. But he has a good mentor: his father, David, who played at Rutgers.
There is one change, however, that will require some time for Lovelace to process.
At Leechburg, all the classrooms (K-12) were in one building. “Now, I have to walk up hills (on Pitt’s campus) and all the way down the road,” he said.
He’s willing to make that sacrifice to chase his dream. He made a bigger one, graduating early from Leechburg and enrolling at Pitt in January so he can join his new teammates in spring drills that begin next month.
“(Leaving Leechburg) was pretty tough,” he said. “All those people, the teachers, they’re all I’ve known.”
But he said his Pitt teammates immediately brought him into the brotherhood.
“Being here now, everybody is taking care of me and making sure I’m all right,” he said.
Before he left high school, there was one goal he wanted to reach: his 1,000th point in basketball. He played in just enough games before the end of the 2022 calendar year to hit that milestone.
“I guess I balled out during those games,” he said.
Lovelace said Leechburg basketball coach Damian Davies wasn’t happy to lose one of his best players, but he understood the goals of a young, talented football player.
“I’ve known him all my life. His son was my best friend growing up,” Lovelace said. “I was very close with him.
“He was sad but excited for me. He was losing a player and also a role model. I tried to lead the team at all times.”
The other difficult decision involved picking a college. He comes from a family that has been Pitt season-ticket holders for many years, but, all of a sudden, Ivy League schools were buzzing his phone, intrigued by his athletic gifts and his 4.05 grade-point average.
He had scholarship offers from Brown, Columbia and Penn, plus Pitt, Virginia Tech, Toledo, Charlotte and Bucknell.
It was kind of a tough decision (to turn down the Ivy League),” he said. “because they say student before athlete as it’s listed. But I knew I could get a very good education here at Pitt, and I can also play Power 5 football. I imagined myself in the jersey.”
He said joining the Panthers is akin to “starting over again.”
“I have to build my way up to gain the respect here. To be the best, you have to be around the best, and that’s where I’m at. We ran the same blitzes (at Leechburg), and I got it my sophomore year. That’s really something I have to hone in on.”
He has been following the lead of rising senior linebacker, Bangally Kamara, who plays the “star” linebacker position that requires a safety skillset to play properly.
Both players are 6-foot-2. Being older, Kamara (225 pounds) is a little heavier than Lovelace (210), who played running back and linebacker at Leechburg and safety in seven-on-seven games.
It’s probably inevitable that there will be questions about his high school background after he played in the WPIAL’s smallest football classification at a school with graduating classes in the 40 to 50 range.
His father helped ease those concerns.
“As I got older, he told me a lot of things,” Lovelace said. “It doesn’t matter where you’re from. You’re still there to do the same job as everybody else. You’re always fighting for a spot. You never have a solid spot. He always told me to focus on myself and not really worry about what the other players were doing.
“To be able to do what he did is just an honor.”
There will be more people in the stands at Acrisure Stadium than he saw at Leechburg. In reality, however, he really didn’t see anyone.
“I don’t pay attention to (the crowds),” he said. “I’m locked into the game at all times. You have to focus on the game and don’t worry about a lot of that.”
After games, however, he took special notice of all the kids that rushed onto the field for autographs.
“They open the gates to the field, and all the little kids come running out with footballs and T-shirts and they always have a marker ready,” he said.
“A lot of the younger kids, they look up to me. They try to model after me, which is really an honor. For them to see what I do, they could be the next people to do it.”