Inside the Rise of Chowan University: How Mark Hall is turning around a small school in the HBCU-heavy CIAA conference

The autumns tumbled together enough that Mark Hall needed to devise an easy method to remember his time at Chowan University.

After all, a decade-and-a-half wasn’t particularly on the horizon when Hall came to Chowan for his first position as a full-time college football assistant. He had toiled in an entry-level, restricted-earnings post after his playing career making a scant $10,000 at his alma mater, the now-defunct Urbana University, which closed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“My daughter is 14, and she was just born when we came down here,” Hall, married to Amy and now with daughters Avery and Makaylin, told FootballScoop. “I jumped on the opportunity to come down here, but I didn’t think I would be here this long, didn’t think 15 years for sure.

“We came down and the program was just in a bad place at that time, that it was going to be a long rebuild process. We had a couple decent years, couple years where I thought we were going to get fired.”

Here, though, is 15 years later at Chowan University, where Hall is in his third year and second season as head coach of the tiny school in Murfreesboro, N.C., where the Atlantic Ocean rests roughly 120 miles to the east and the Virginia border 10 miles to the north.

Where the Hawks, perhaps under-resourced and oft-overlooked in the historically HBCU-rooted Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association conference, are making history and on the cusp of more.

Securing a second-straight seven-win season and readying for Saturday’s tilt opposite Fayetteville State in Chowan’s first-ever CIAA Championship Game appearance,

“I think anytime you’ve got a chance to play for a championship, you want to perform at your absolute best and get the job done,” Hall said. “Something we talk about a lot is competitive excellence. Being at our best when our best is needed. We have that moment again this week, with the opportunity to play a good Fayetteville State team for our conference championship.

“Winning the North Division and getting to this game, it’s the first time either of those things has happened in school history. And it’s even a little more sweet because we started the season 0-2, and I think everybody wrote us off. There were probably people on our own campus who wrote us off, but this team never stopped believing in what we could accomplish.”

How did a program that averaged 5.7 losses per season, including six campaigns of six or more losses, for the decade prior to Hall’s ascension to the top whistle so quickly turn itself around?

Hall implemented sweeping and non-negotiable elements designed to overhaul a Hawks’ program culture that clearly had deteriorated and restore the joy of competition.

That included Hall being forced to make some difficult changes to the assistant coaching staff – guys with whom he had absorbed many of those losses – and reminding those coaches who remained or were added that they, first and foremost, would set the tone for the program.

“I think it starts with the coaches, and the coaches gotta bring the right energy every day,” Hall said. “Kids gotta say we enjoy what we are doing.

“if you treat people the right way, treat kids the right way, then I think there’s a big misconception with today’s kids that they don’t wanna be coached. I think kids today want to be coached, but I just think you’ve gotta go about it a little differently. They have got to know you really know you care about them and have best their interests and are offering something they want to be part of.”

So Hall does his best to keep his office door always open, never closed, and to invite players.

Scratch that, players know they do not need an invitation, nor do they need to enter the Hawks’ football nest seeking only to talk … football.

“We’ve tried to make practice fun, allowed music to be played, let the guys have fun and celebrate out there on the field,” Hall said. “We want to compete and bring the right energy, but it’s not just football 100% of the time. We like to have the guys in here to just shoot the shit, for lack of a better term. I’m a college football coach, but I’m just a regular guy. Let’s get a ‘Who’s better: LeBron or Michael Jordan debate.’

“It doesn’t have to be Xs and Os because it’s about the culture, culture, culture.”

Hall traces back to two major components, one a personnel change and the other a mindset, to the foundational component of the Hawks’ remarkable, back-to-back seven-win-season turnarounds that could include the program’s first-ever NCAA Division II Playoffs berth with a win in the CIAA title contest and climbing into the top four of the Region 2 rankings.

First, Hall hired Colin Neely – a former standout-player at Michigan State -- as his defensive coordinator. All Neely did in Year 1 was help the Hawks’ defense cut its scoring average virtually in half, from 40.6 points per game to 22.6 ppg.

The unit has become even stingier in 2022, yielding less than 19 ppg and holding six foes to 17 or fewer points.

“The best thing I’ve done since I became head coach is hiring Coach Neely,” Hall said. “He kind of brought that to me, not so much the sideline thing, but really coaching and emphasizing energy and enthusiasm and even overemphasizing it at practice.

“He’s that way as our defensive coordinator and I am our offensive coordinator, if either side is celebrating all the time, it has an impact mentally and emotionally. We just kind of ran with it as a program.”

How much do the Hawks embrace that sideline demeanor as a program? Well, it’s the other foundational tenet to which Hall points for Chowan’s vibe.

On Sundays, Hall gathers with coaches and players to watch video from the previous day; not, however, breaking down the Xs and Os.

Not in this session, anyway.

“I like to pick on guys standing over there not celebrating on the sideline,” Hall said of the enthusiastic but pointed Sunday reviews. “If it’s a tackle or a TFL or a regular catch, we’re not gonna get bored seeing that and seeing our guys making plays. I think that affects the team on the other side.

“I think that’s helped us, especially playing all these close games.”

The Hawks are 5-2 this season in games decided by a touchdown or less. Being comfortable in tight affairs likewise ties into the program’s approaches on both sides of the ball.

“We’re going to be aggressive, both sides,” Hall said. “We’re going to blitz a lot on defense, be aggressive on offense, create explosive plays.”

Creating a new way, a winning one, suddenly is synonymous with Hall’s two-year turnaround.

He’s neither ready for this season to end nor expecting that the Hawks’ newfound success might also stop with it.

“Hopefully, we can win the championship this year and that should help us again with our next recruiting class,” Hall said. “This team is set up to be really good in 2023.

“Actually, we came into this year thinking 2023 could be even better for us, we’ve got some kids that should be better in Year 2 for us, but guys are stepping up. I think this thing is sustainable as long as we keep working at it and getting better every day.”

In other words, Hall doesn’t have a clock set on times-up at Chowan. Not with 15 years and counting.