Lakewood athlete commits to Methodist

With winter sports coming to a close, and spring sports picking up, one three-sport Lakewood athlete has signed a deal to go play football at the next level. Leopard Chris Carr, a running back and defensive back on the football team, recently committed to play at Methodist University in nearby Fayetteville.

“It feels good,” Carr said, on making a deep playoff run in his senior football season.

Rounding out Carr’s career for the black and gold at Lakewood, he was an integral part of back-to-back 10-win seasons. He was also part of back-to-back third-round playoff runs.

“We had Coach (Barrett) Sloan my freshman through junior years,” he added. “He was a good coach. He taught me things that I didn’t know. And then Coach Holt came in, and he taught me more about football.”

In his three years under Sloan’s leadership, Carr racked up 869 yards on 97 carries in 28 games played, giving him an average of 31 yards per game and nine yards per rush, plus 12 touchdowns total across the three seasons. In his 2024 campaign, Carr nearly matched those totals while splitting the backfield with Calvin Lacewell. Across all 14 games for the Leopards this season — including the upset win over undefeated conference foe North Duplin in the second round of the playoffs — Carr rushed for 744 yards on 71 carries, averaging 10.5 yards per carry and 53.1 yards a game. Two games this season saw him carry the ball for over 100 yards. He added eight rushing touchdowns as well.

Defensively, he added 31 total tackles this year, including 13 solo. Combined with his previous years’ efforts, he tallied 80 total tackles for the Leopards in his four-year campaign.

As far as the recruiting process to play collegiate football, Carr said it was something that was built over time — with Sloan getting his name out to recruiters in his freshman season.

“My freshman year, I was like 5’7”, 155 — I didn’t really play football like that. I played in middle school, but I was on the line and stuff like that,” the Leopard senior expressed. “I was being doubted a lot. But coming into my freshman year, I told Coach Sloan what I was going through. He talked to me about it.”

The beginning of a series of tribulations that Carr would eventually experience had just unfolded. The person that Carr was in a relationship with passed away, affecting the young athlete.

“I started talking to him (Sloan) about that, and he was there for me. Throughout my first year, he started texting coaches about me and sending film,” Carr shared.

Under the guidance of Sloan and coaches at out-of-state camps, Carr said he began working on different aspects of his game to better himself on the field for his sophomore and junior campaigns.

And then, more tragedy struck for the Lakewood athlete. Prior to his junior football season starting, his mother passed away. Adding to that, he was injured early in the season. But, Carr said, he didn’t allow that to keep him down or deter him from football greatness.

“Coaches weren’t looking at me (in a recruiting sense) anymore,” Carr said, about his junior year injury. “But when I came back, I just used that as motivation. I started reaching out to coaches.”

Carr was recruited and offered by other schools like Erskine, Chowan, West Virginia Wesleyan, St. Andrew’s, Ottawa, and McPherson College. But Methodist stuck to the Lakewood running back.

“It just felt like home when I went on a visit,” he said. “I went on a visit three or four times and just by having a good relationship with Coach (Jakob) Woods and just talking to him and the rest of the coaching staff, and the players that were already there — it just made it feel like home.”

Carr also added that he picked Methodist “because it was one of the lowest division schools, and I just want to be different from everybody else and make a name for myself — I want so show people that anything is possible no matter what division the school is.” Methodist competes in Division III athletics, and Carr will be pursuing a degree in sports management on an academic scholarship.