Pirates’ Moore, Tyson sign to play college football

LUMBERTON — The Lumberton football program’s class of 2024 seniors might have won only three varsity games in four years with the Pirates. But the number three can be attached to a positive statistic as well.

Three players have now signed to play college football.

The Pirates’ Travon Moore signed to Greensboro College and Kendrick Tyson inked to North Carolina Wesleyan during a ceremony in Lumberton Tuesday.

“It’s very rewarding, just knowing that I came in every day and put in the work, and just knowing that my work meant something,” Moore said. “Leaving this program better than it was when I came here, and knowing that the work that got put in paid off in the long run.”

Both programs compete in NCAA Division III in the USA South Conference.

“I’ve been dreaming since a kid, always wanting to play college ball,” Tyson said. “You know how everybody says they want to make it out of the hood; I was always that one player that was just like ‘I’m going to go get it.’ And I can see it in the people I was around that knew that’s what I wanted; they were like, Kendrick’s always got something better to do, Kendrick can go do this and Kendrick can go do that, but he’s not hanging with us because that’s not what he does.”

Moore, 6-foot-1, 175-pound quarterback, threw for 647 yards and five touchdowns in eight games last season.

“Greensboro’s getting a versatile quarterback with a strong arm, and mentally tough to play that position,” Lumberton assistant coach Patrick McBride said. “Over the last two years he has grown as a quarterback. He knew how to read the defense very well, and the upside to it is he has nothing but growth to do. What I’m getting at is, he loves the game and wants to play the game.”

“Coming into this season, I just put everything on the line,” Moore said. “I went into the weight room and took every single rep at practice, every single rep in the game seriously, and this is where it got me.”

Tyson, a 6-foot-2, 310-pound lineman, played both sides of the ball as a senior, with four pancake blocks on the offensive line and five tackles with one tackle for loss on defense.

“(N.C. Wesleyan is) getting an NFL-sized lineman that’s coming out of here,” McBride said. “Kendrick’s got the drive, the want to do better. The big thing with him is he’s overcome some things with injuries where now he knows he can do it. At first, Kendrick was a little timid because of his injury, but in his last year here in high school we kind of got that out of his system and now he knows he can use that leg and stuff. At the college level, he’s ready, because I know at the college level they’re going to give him all the tools he needs to be successful.”

Moore also had offers from Methodist, St. Andrews, N.C. Wesleyan and Wooster; Tyson also had offers from Brevard and Livingstone.

Both said getting a moderate distance away from home — both about two hours from Lumberton — was personally a plus; both said the program they’re joining made them feel at home when they visited.

“It really played a big part in the decision,” Moore said. “I wanted to be somewhere kind of far away from home. Not too far — far enough to where I can get back but far enough to where I’m (on my own).”

“I didn’t want to be close to home, I wanted to be far away, where I can get a college experience, instead of just being like at UNCP, which is too close to home for me,” Tyson said.

While the Pirates program they leave behind is coming off a 2-8 season and is currently in the midst of its fourth head coaching change since 2018, McBride believes that the three collegiate signings from this year’s class is a huge positive step forward.

“I think that’s a boost for the program,” McBride said. “We’re sending kids to college to play at the next level. Even though we don’t have the wins and losses that we wanted to have, we are producing the next-level players that’s coming out of here, and that is a big plus for this program.”