Even though Young fell off the radar into the arms of Lackawanna only because offensive coordinator Ray Dayton ventured into Binghamton High School following a tip, former Lackawanna head man Mark Duda predicts a long run for him in the pros.
“If Coach Ray doesn’t find him, I don’t think he ever gets found,” says Duda, recently retired from a career that began with 55 NFL games at defensive tackle for the old St. Louis Cardinals of the mid-1980s.
“He saw that Greek god looking son of a gun. He didn’t look like a normal person. Quite a physique. … Such a wingspan and a huge catch radius. He won’t be overwhelmed by the NFL.
“Coach Dayton asked him, ‘Where do you want to go to college?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ Which is just what we’re looking for. They’re going to love this guy out there. Did everything that we asked. I call him and he still picks up on the first ring. Good kid.”
Young knew where he didn’t want to go. Western Carolina. Furman. He thinks COVID saved him instead of hurt him when it wiped out his senior season. He thinks it slowed the process, so he didn’t jump at Albany’s offer. Only the FCS wanted him, and he wanted the FBS.
“He had interest up and down the East Coast,” says Vaughn Labor, his high school wide receivers coach. “But it wasn’t at the level (he wanted).
“A hard worker. That never was his problem. He lived in the weight room. He kept growing. Never shy about the work.”
He chose to wait for one season at Lackawanna that included the YouTube favorite of him at West Point knifing in the air between two defenders in the last minute to beat the Army JV on a bomb, “his recruiting went from 0 to 60,” Duda says. “Everybody wanted him.”
It was Labor, now the Binghamton head coach, who heard shortly after the draft that Young was coming into the building for a visit. He was headed back to Athens and the University of Georgia before taking off for Cincinnati, and wanted to see some of the teachers who had an influence on him. Plus, take a photo with his niece, a star for the girls’ flag football team at the school.
Suddenly, Labor, a ninth grade global teacher, saw an excited throng outside his room. He let some of the football players in, and the PR person got a three-minute interview for the school website.
“He was always ware that he had people looking up to him,” Labor says.
An honest-to-goodness event. After all, the last of three Binghamton alums in the NFL played 79 years ago, when quarterback John Ksionzyk threw seven passes for the ’47 Rams. How long ago? That was the year after the Rams joined Paul Brown’s Cleveland team to integrate the game.
“I loved every part of growing up there,” Young says of the patch between Syracuse and Scranton. “It’s such a small city that everybody knows everybody. Just the connections. Just enjoying the little things. Embracing that. I got the best out of it.”
After growing up in nearby Endicott, where he played for the basketball powerhouse Union-Endicott of the ’70s and ’80s, he moved to the Pearl Washington Orangemen at Syracuse. He came back to start Progressive Dental, and has five offices in the Binghamton area. His “Big East Rewind,” podcast takes you back. He coached his girls at Maine-Endwell. His friends have built Binghamton University into an American East power by recruiting local talent.
The suburbs, with their marvelous feeder programs and sprawling districts, have, in pockets, dwarfed the Binghamtons and Elmiras.
“We’ve had runs here in the area in basketball, and you’d have to say statewide, it’s a hotbed for baseball,” Spera says. “Football has been hit and miss. There are good players and they go to good small schools like Colgate. But it’s rare. (Former Alabama coach) Nick Saban and (current Rutgers coach) Greg Schiano aren’t coming through. Not a lot of 6-5, 300-pound offensive linemen. Solid players, but …”