‘Athletically motivated’ Connor Mitch follows in family footsteps

When Connor Mitch’s high school friends got an invitation to play video games at his house, they always agreed warily.

“They’d say, ‘Is your dad there?’” Mitch’s mother Janet said.

All the boys knew if Bob Mitch was home, an impromptu passing drill was always a possibility. For Bob Mitch, a former quarterback at Syracuse, a basement full of Wakefield High’s starting quarterback and his buddies and wide receivers was too much of a temptation.

“I would say, ‘Let’s get our shoes on, come on,’” Bob Mitch said.

Welcome to the Mitch House, where athletic expectations were high and three Division I athletes were raised. Oldest Ryan, 30, was a three-year quarterback starter at storied DeMatha High and went on to play at Maryland. Middle child Brittany, 28, played basketball at Duke and had a scholarship offer to play both basketball and soccer at Virginia. And youngest Connor, 21, is expected to start at quarterback for South Carolina on Sept. 3 when the Gamecocks open the season against North Carolina.

“I think part of it is DNA. I think part of it is competitiveness, and I think it was because of him,” Janet Mitch says, tilting her head toward her husband, “his commitment to excellence.”

Bob Mitch made sure all three of his children had whatever they needed and went wherever they needed to mine all they had out of their athletic gifts.

“If I had seen these kids didn’t have the athletic ability, I would have backed off in a flash,” Bob Mitch said. “I don’t need them to be athletes, but when I did see they had the talent, yeah, I wanted to see what they could do.”

When Connor Mitch was home last weekend, his father pulled his agility ladder and tackling dummies into the backyard for footwork and passing drills.

“I am a stickler for fundamentals,” Bob Mitch said.

If the Mitch children had a game on a Saturday, that meant no friends at their house or parties on Friday night.

“They didn’t seem to mind because they loved it, too,” Janet Mitch said. “We made all this stuff family stuff, and we enjoyed doing it.

“We don’t watch the History Channel.”

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier declined an interview request from The State for this story, but those closest to the 6-foot-3 sophomore quarterback believe he’s ready if called upon to replace Dylan Thompson as the Gamecocks starter.

“Can he do it? He can definitely do it,” Wakefield coach Rod Sink said. “He’s not an up-and-down kid. He’s not a rah-rah guy. He was a guy people had confidence in, and when he was playing well, everybody had lots of confidence.

“He can handle it.”

The Mitch family moved from Virginia to Raleigh the summer before Connor Mitch’s seventh-grade year. Connor was the baby, nine years younger than his brother and seven years younger than his sister, but he was as natural as his siblings. His first athletic endeavor in North Carolina was a travel baseball team, and his parents quickly thought their son was about to give up football.

“I said, ‘You never strike out,’” Bob Mitch said. “He said, ‘Dad, I get three swings at the ball. If I can’t make contact, I’m in trouble.’”

His love affair with baseball was overshadowed when he arrived at Wakefield High and won the starting quarterback job on the varsity as a freshman. Mitch loved the large and boisterous crowds at football games but hated the I-formation, run-heavy offense the team used his first season.

That summer, longtime Mitch family friend Bill Renner was following the same path the Mitchs had, moving from suburban Washington, D.C., to North Carolina’s Triangle. Renner, the coach at Langley High in Virginia, talked to Wakefield about joining the coaching staff and went so far as to pitch his five-wide, spread offense.

Sink, who was Wakefield’s offensive coordinator, was convinced Renner’s offense and Connor Mitch’s ability were a perfect match.

“I looked at the head coach at the time, I said, ‘We have to do this for him,’” Sink said.

Renner, the father of former North Carolina quarterback Bryn Renner and now a quarterback coach in Raleigh, thought the same thing.

“He grew up in an environment that was athletically motivated,” Bill Renner said. “In his mind, (being a quarterback) is what he was going to do. The nurture part was growing up in it, and the nature part was the genes that he got. The DNA structure that they have gave him good size, gave him good athletic prowess, but if you do not do the right stuff, it does not matter. He worked to bring the two together.”

By his senior season at Wakefield, Mitch was calling most of the plays from the game plan Sink gave him each week. He threw for 12,078 yards and 153 touchdowns in four years at Wakefield, where he became a four-star recruiting prospect. He threw for a state record nine touchdowns in one game his senior season.

“Everybody’s aunts, brothers, uncles, cousins were here” to recruit Mitch, Sink said.

Mitch’s final two choices were the Gamecocks and LSU because of his relationships with South Carolina quarterbacks coach G.A. Mangus and Tigers offensive coordinator Steve Kragthorpe. Mitch’s decision was made when Kragthorpe announced he was leaving full-time coaching because of Parkinson’s disease.

“He chose relationship over everything else,” Sink said.

Mitch enrolled at South Carolina in January of 2013 and redshirted that season. Last year, he completed 2-of-6 passes for 19 yards in relief in Thompson, and he emerged from spring practice as the frontrunner for the starting job, although Spurrier has yet to eliminate Perry Orth or Michael Scarnecchia from the competition.

Mitch has the right skill set to fit into Spurrier’s passing offense, Renner said.

“I’m not a big believer in how strong your arm needs to be. It’s really more can you throw it on time and in rhythm. If a quarterback understands that, it really doesn’t matter how strong your arm is. Connor understands timing, timing and the rhythm of getting the ball out.”

Renner and Sink have reiterated the same message to Mitch as he prepares for the most important season of his football career.

“All you have to do is go do your job,” Sink said. “Go do your job and you will be fine. Let the chips fall where they fall.”