Baldwin’s Childress Making Most of Opportunities at CMU

MT. PLEASANT – When Baldwin native Brandon Childress announced he’d continue his football career at Central Michigan in February 2015, the program was in a state of flux.

It was just three weeks prior to Childress signing that head coach Dan Enos abruptly announced his resignation, accepting the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach position at Arkansas.

Move forward a year later and the former all-state quarterback is wrapping up his redshirt freshman year and finding his way at wide receiver.

"I feel like I came a long way,” Childress said. “I’ve still got a lot of work to do and there’s a lot of little things that I have to clean up, here and there, but I feel like I’ve came a long way.”

The transition from quarterback to wide receiver was a relatively smooth one for Childress, who led Baldwin to three consecutive conference championships and postseason appearances, including the program’s first district title in 2014.

"It wasn’t too big of an adjustment, because a lot of receiver is knowing the defense and understanding the concept, so that kind of translated from being a quarterback,” Childress said “Now it’s just about catching the football."

It was as a member of the scout team last fall and at CMU’s recent Maroon and Gold spring game that Childress began asserting himself in the Chippewas receiving corps.

“You always want to see improvement and development across the board with all of your young players and Brandon is a guy that really stands out,” head coach John Bonamego said. “He has kind of made that transition from being a high school quarterback to a wide receiver. He got a lot of reps in the fall on the scout teams and this spring he really started to assert himself and really start. You can see him getting comfortable in that role and he’ll be very important this fall as far as giving depth to that position."

Childress and the Chippewas open their season at Kelly/Shorts Stadium on Thursday, Sept. 1, hosting FCS opponent Presbyterian (S.C.).