How a Division-I QB prospect from California has helped turn around Edmond Memorial

EDMOND — David McComb was ready to throw the dagger.

The 6-foot-3 Edmond Memorial sophomore quarterback, who already has received scholarship offers from Memphis and Akron, zipped the football to Markell Johnson who was crossing the field.

Johnson, the former starting quarterback, caught the pass, absorbed contact and trotted into the end zone with the ball stretched out in front of him for a bit of emphasis.

The touchdown pass was McComb’s third of the night and it all but secured the city championship and ended Edmond Santa Fe’s win streak over Memorial that dated to 2014.

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The Bulldogs celebrated the championship in front of their student section with a photo of the entire team. It was an accomplishment that would have seemed unlikely just a few years ago. But with the California kid that was laid across the front of the group photo, they were a new team.

Two years ago, McComb and his family moved from California to Edmond in search of a better chance at a football season. Instead of choosing a powerhouse from one of the surrounding schools in the area, the talented quarterback landed at Edmond Memorial, a program that had been down on its luck for the past decade. Now with McComb leading the way, the Bulldogs are trending upward.

With a 3-2 record, the Bulldogs have won more games than they have combined in the past three years. This season, McComb has helped lead Memorial to its first win in its stadium that was built in 2019 and victories over both Edmond North and Edmond Santa Fe.

The Bulldogs are on a three-game win streak and second-year Edmond Memorial coach Logan Thomas said his quarterback is a big reason for the turnaround.

“It’s pretty hard for a single kid to make an impact on a program as much as he has,” Thomas said.

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McComb is a Division-I prospect at quarterback. He visited the Sooners in July. So as talented as the Californian is, how did land at Edmond Memorial?

It has a lot to do with McComb’s older brother, Justus, who’s a quarterback at Southwest Minnesota State. And how California handled the COVID-19 pandemic.

Due to the lockdowns, Justus missed out on half of his senior football season. It drastically changed his recruiting, which consisted of many FCS schools on the West Coast.

The McComb family scanned its options. It wasn’t until Kyle’s best friend from college, who’s an Ardmore native, decided he was moving to Edmond that the McCombs gave the Sooner state a look.

Dacia, McComb’s mother, chose a house in Edmond. It just so happened to sit in the Edmond Memorial district. Kyle, who was a high school football coach in California for 17 years, searched Memorial on MaxPreps and noticed the football team’s struggles.

He gave his wife a raised brow, “Are you sure this is where you want to go?”’

Her mind was made up.

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So, the family left El Cajon, California, for Edmond. McComb, who spent his entire life in California, left his friends and other relatives for the unknown in the Midwest.

McComb's idea of Oklahoma was straight out of a dusty old-school Western. Then, the family moved.

"Dang," he thought, "it's pretty nice here."

Because McComb missed his eighth-grade season due to the pandemic, Thomas only had game footage of McComb’s seventh-grade year. But looking at the film of his individual workouts, Thomas was impressed.

“You could tell just the way the ball left his hand,” Thomas said, “and you could see how big he was, even as a ninth grader. It’s funny, we had Markell playing quarterback and we were building around him and were like, 'When (McComb) gets here, maybe as a sophomore (McComb) will play and that’ll free up Markell to do some other things.' And that process just got started a little earlier than we planned.”

Johnson went down with an ankle injury midway through the season. McComb stepped in and threw two touchdown passes, earning himself a little more trust with his coaches. He eventually earned the starting spot against Norman a few games later.

Since then, the Bulldogs have been building toward the team Thomas knew they could be. They’ve always had talent with players like Johnson and Kiefer Mullins. But now, with McComb, they are reaching their full potential.

“It’s really cool,” McComb said of the turnaround. “What we have is a special thing."

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This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma high school football: David McComb, Edmond Memorial on a rise