From Dark Horse to Pirate

Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series covering Leonard Henry. The second part will cover his life in the NFL and his post-football career.

Roughly seven percent of high school football players play at the collegiate level. Of those, 1.6 percent make it to the league. And out of those select few, running backs have the shortest average careers out of any position — roughly 2.5 years. Clinton’s Leonard Henry defied all of those odds.

“Clinton High School is known to produce good athletes,” the former Dark Horse, ECU Pirate and Miami Dolphin said in a recent interview. “It’s more of a community culture thing here in Clinton. Football is king, kind of like in Alabama.”

A story that has been told many times over in Sampson County is one that talks about the pipeline from Clinton to East Carolina University to the Miami Dolphins in the late-90s to early 2000s, especially as a running back. But, Henry noted, there’s more to it than that.

“Here in Clinton, we have kind of gotten spoiled — it’s championship or nothing,” he said. “Ronnie Dixon, Dennis Owens — these guys are older guys, in the early-80s, mid-80s — these were guys who were as gifted (as I was), and they went onto the NFL. So before Jerris (McPhail), myself, and Willie (Parker) came through, these guys paved the way. And we’ve always had some pretty good athletes right here in Clinton, and football has just been that thing that’s brought everybody together.”

Henry played three years for the Dolphins, the team who drafted him in the seventh round of the 2002 NFL draft — just 44 days after trading for the tumultuous Heisman Trophy-winning running back, Ricky Williams. Before he was drafted, though, Leonard racked up 3,089 rushing yards for the ECU Pirates, second all-time in school history. His 32 total touchdowns have him tied in fourth place in the school’s history.

“Growing up, as a young kid and playing rec ball and hearing about the Jerris McPhails, the Fuzzy Lees, and the Scooter Banks — these are just athletes that are well-known here in Clinton — those guys were your hero,” he continued. “If you played sports, you wanted to emulate something that they did. You wanted to dunk like Scooter, who played basketball. You wanted to run super fast like Fuzzy Lee. You wanted to run hard like Jerris McPhail.”

Education, he said, is just as important as athletics, though. Juggling sports and classes isn’t easy, especially not in college, and Henry’s path towards both playing football and receiving his diploma was even tougher. “I’ll never forget, when I played high school football, the only thing we wanted to do around here — we probably knew that we had the skills and the ability to get recruited to go off to college — but the only thing we wanted around here was to win the state championship,” he quipped. “So college would be extra. If we won the state championship, you felt like you had won the Super Bowl.”

“When college began to come, East Carolina began to throw out opportunities and other schools like that, it was kind of like, ‘Wow, I can go and play,’” the running back-turned-pastor said. “I never saw it like that. Here in Clinton, all we wanted to do was be better than the team at Clinton High School before, and to win a state championship. So when I was able to get blessed and go play at the next level, it was amazing, because it’s like, wow, I can play football.”

“And of course, now I gotta also have an education,” the slender, but energetic pastor continued. “I always say to many young athletes, ‘You are student-athletes — think about that — student first, athlete second.”

From this, his attention shifted briefly to today’s world, full of Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) deals that are popular in college sports since becoming legalized.

“Just like I was not even thinking about college in high school, the kids in college aren’t even thinking about making it to the NFL, because they’re making the same amount of money — probably more — in college than they would be making in the league,” he added. “They get the league minimum (in the NFL), and then after that, if you’re not a superstar, you’re just going to get basically your league minimum. Whereas in college, you can kind of have your cake, and eat it, too.”

Going back to his time in college, after the NIL spurred an errant talking point for him, he continued to discuss the importance of his education. “I was the third person in my family to graduate from college, and that was huge,” he said. “My college coach, Jerry McManus, who was the running backs coach said, ‘Listen, I can’t guarantee you the NFL. But if you go to class, do what they ask you to do, man, you can get a degree from this.’ And I was highly blessed to graduate in four years.”

While many student-athletes get their degree in four years, not all of them do. Some take five years, some take more, and some never get their degree at all. But for Henry, he needed to get his for two reasons: the NCAA Clearinghouse said he must, since he was a partial qualifier, and two make his family proud.

A partial qualifier, he said, is someone that doesn’t have a high enough SAT score to get a full-ride scholarship, even though they have the GPA. That meant that on top of being a high-producing running back at a division one school, he also had to take a full course load and pass.

“And that was tough. It wasn’t easy,” Henry said. “But I was able to do it with my academic advisor, Coach Logan, and Coach McManus making sure that I kept my promise.”

“Education was critical back then,” he continued. “Because the NFL was not a guaranteed thing for me, as well as it wasn’t a guaranteed thing for the rest of the guys. So, it was something that you sought out and you knew was the primary focus, whereas now education is nowhere near the primary focus of a student-athlete.”

While he spent four years at ECU, racking up the rushing yards, Henry attributes his next step to the NFL to some sort of divine intervention.

“My senior year, some unheard of supernatural stuff took place,” he said.

“I’ve always been the kind of person where it’s about wins more than it is about stats and individualism — that’s just the way we were brought up here in Clinton,” he added. “So while at ECU, in my senior year, things were happening for me so quickly. In my second or third game, I am well over 400 yards. And you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, we’ve only played two or three games.’”

It would, in fact, be Henry’s third game that season that carried him over the 400 total yard mark, as he had 470 total yards through the first three games.

“And it just kept happening,” he continued. “And the next thing you know, I looked up and I saw a Sports Illustrated. Jason Williams is up there — basketball player for Duke — he had on a hat and a suitcase and everything like that. Well in the back of it, it had some of the finalists for the Heisman.”

Little did he know, his name was in that same edition. It wouldn’t be until many years later, he said, that he saw his name in that edition of the sports magazine as being on “Heisman Watch”.

“Lo and behold, it had Leonard Henry,” he said, this time with a bit more of a smile. “A Dark Horse. Think about it, Dark Horse.”

“This was about midway through the season, basically what they were highlighting is that this dude, in five games, has rushed for well over 800-some yards and this is crazy,” he added.

It was another former Dark Horse player that helped him get ready for the draft, he said. “Jerris (McPhail) was kind of goings me some scoops and things to do and don’t. I was able to put myself in a position, obviously, with the good Lord’s help to go to the rookie combine. And if you’re going to the combine, it’s a great chance that you’re probably going to get drafted.”

“Going from ECU to the NFL, I knew it was a business. The advantage I had, though, was that Jerris McPhail had already been,” he added.