Dayvion Holloway stands outside Trojan Field on Wednesday. The senior is in his first year at Barren County and has helped lead the team to a 2-1 start.

GLASGOW – With 3.1 seconds left on the clock, Gavin Spurrier took the snap and then a knee to close out South Warren’s 20-16 victory over Covington Catholic in the 2018 KHSAA Commonwealth Gridiron Bowl Class 5A State Championship.

Junior Dayvion Holloway, the team’s second-leading rusher, was one of the Spartans to take the field to celebrate the school’s second state title.

“It was live. It was fun,” he said. “We got hype and threw our helmets and cried.”

A chance at repeating with South Warren and turning into the go-to back wouldn’t come about for Holloway, however. Just a few months following the game, he transferred to Barren County – the fifth high school he’s attended – and has helped lead the Trojans to a 2-1 start this fall.

“It’s going good,” Holloway said. “I’m doing a lot of things, working hard.”

Holloway started high school at Hart County before making the move to Warren Central that same year. As a sophomore, he was at Warren East, and for the first part of his junior year he was at South Warren.

All of those moves aren’t for football, though.

Holloway has been in foster homes since he was 16 years old, he says.

“Me and my dad got into it,” he explained.

Holloway says he still sees his father on Sundays and that he FaceTimes his mother in Georgia every night, but he’s now living in Glasgow with a new family. The move from South Warren, he says, was because of “bad behavior.”

“I’m learning from my mistakes and trying to do better,” he said.

“And he has,” Barren County coach Jackson Arnett added. “He’s been solid as a rock here.”

When he changed schools, South Warren coach Brandon Smith called Arnett, just like Warren East coach Jeff Griffith did for Smith when Holloway went from Warren East to South Warren.

“When Coach Griff called me, I didn’t really completely understand what he was talking about until (Holloway) got here and I got to be around him. You saw that Dayvion just needed a little push, needed a little help and he was a really good kid who’s trying to make the best of his situation,” Smith said. “Then you just get to know him and you feel for him and want the best for him, no matter if it’s for your team or for another team.”

Holloway didn’t see much action as a sophomore at Warren East in 2017 – he played in just one game – but he played in 10 of South Warren’s 15 games in the unbeaten 2018 campaign. He rushed for 245 yards and two touchdowns on 44 attempts, marks only behind Cameron Harrison’s 1,523 yards and 21 touchdowns on 216 carries.

Two of Holloway’s best performances came in a 48-0 win over Apollo in the first round of the playoffs and a 55-21 victory over Grayson County in the second round of the playoffs. In the first, he totaled 68 yards and a touchdown on eight carries and in the second he had 59 yards on 10 carries.

With Harrison being a senior, Holloway was likely the next in line, or, at least, would have seen an increase in touches as a senior.

“He would have played quite a bit and he was in our plans. The situation came up where he had to move, which was tough for us, but I was really – I guess happy would be the word – with how much progress he made in a year in not just football, but with himself,” Smith said. “I’m really thrilled he’s doing what I thought he was capable of doing at Barren County.”

Holloway went from being the backup on an undefeated, state championship-winning team to the focal point of a team coming off a 3-7 season in which it didn’t compete in district play.

He’s helped change things early on, too. Barren County entered the season without a win in a season-opening contest since 2015, but the Trojans came away with a 48-6 victory over Metcalfe County to open the fall.

“We needed to win it. I don’t think Barren County had won an opening game since like 2015 or something, so it was good and we wanted to establish the run game and we did,” Arnett said. “I think we ran for close to 300 yards that night.”

Barren County totaled 311 yards on the ground. Holloway had 166 of those, plus two touchdowns, on seven carries. He wasn’t thinking about the stops he made before getting there, his first game with Barren County or the crowd at Hornet Field. He just played football.

“The crowd – I blocked everybody out,” he said. “It was just me and myself.”

The Trojans are 2-1 after a 26-14 victory against Adair County last week. Holloway is up to 335 yards and five touchdowns on 29 attempts. He’s averaging nearly 112 rushing yards per game, less than eight fewer than Barren County averaged last year per game as a team.

Arnett describes Holloway’s running style as patient with great vision, comparing him to Le’Veon Bell. Smith says he’s smooth and natural, like he had grown up playing backyard football and uses his instincts to get an edge over defenders, before taking off down the field.

Either way, the fourth-year Barren County coach believes it’s helped open up others on the offense, like quarterback Jameson Buie and senior back Tyler Bush. Buie has thrown for 419 yards and two touchdowns and Bush has rushed for 142 yards and scored three touchdowns.

“We’ve got to keep running the ball and we’ve got to keep being balanced and spreading it out, because we’ve got a lot of other good players, too,” Arnett said. “What he can do is help make those other guys even better than they already were.”

Holloway wants to attend another school later on – the University of Kentucky.

He says he’s been a fan of the Wildcats since he was younger and that his favorite player is Benny Snell Jr., the program’s all-time leading rusher.

It’s not a plan that’s set in stone just yet. Arnett is working to continue getting film together for him, which hasn’t been much of an issue with the way he’s played through the first three games. After that, it may depend on which opportunities present themselves.

“His goal is to play at Kentucky and we’ll do whatever we can to get our film out and send it and do whatever, and if it works out it works out, and if he gets a chance to play somewhere else, he might play somewhere else,” Arnett said. “It’s whatever God’s plan is, we’ll just do that.”

For now, however, Holloway’s focus is on the games ahead, starting with Monroe County on Friday as the Trojans try to move to 3-1, and as he continues to try to be the go-to player on offense.

“I love it,” he said. “Keep feeding me the ball.”{&end}