Courtney Coming Into His Own for Cavaliers

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In December 2023, University of Virginia wide receivers coach Adam Mims sat in the stands at Scott Stadium and watched Kameron Courtney produce a masterpiece.

In the final game of his illustrious high school football career, Courtney scored three touchdowns to help unbeaten Freedom defeat Highland Springs 42-34 for the Class 6 state title. Courtney’s TDs came on runs of 14 and 49 yards and on a 53-yard reception, and he also shined at defensive back.

“He killed it,” Mims recalled this week.

About a month after Freedom captured its second straight state championship, Courtney enrolled at UVA, and he was honored as the team’s offensive rookie of the year for 2024.

The 5-foot-11, 193-pound Courtney has elevated his game as a sophomore. In Virginia’s 55-16 rout of William & Mary at Scott Stadium last weekend, he caught four passes for a team-high 67 yards, carried once for 23 yards and a touchdown, and returned a kickoff 38 yards.

Courtney scored his TD—his first as a Cavalier—on a first-quarter reverse.

“It was kind of crazy,” he said, “because it was kind of the same play I ran in high school and I ended up scoring on it. It felt great, kind of déjà vu a little bit.”

Virginia (2-1 overall) opens ACC play Saturday at 7:30 p.m. against Stanford (1-2, 1-0) at Scott Stadium. For the season, Courtney has seven receptions for 94 yards. The rush against W&M was his first of the season. So was his kickoff return, which came late in the third quarter and nearly went awry.

“I’m not going to lie,” Courtney said, “I was a little nonchalant in my stance, so I kind of got a late start on the ball.”

He wasn’t in position to catch the kickoff in the air, and “I didn’t want to run up and have it bounce off my leg or something,” Courtney said. “So I was like, ‘I have to take a risk,’ and it ended up bouncing perfectly. So I just grabbed it, and as soon as I grabbed it I knew I had to make something shake.”

Courtney caught every pass thrown to him against the Tribe, and two of his receptions set up the Will Bettridge field goal that made it 52-7. First, on third-and-11 from UVA 22, Courtney leaped to catch a pass from quarterback Daniel Kaelin for a 14-yard gain. On the next play, Kaelin hit Courtney for a 30-yard completion.

“Our motto in the receiving room is, we make the tough catches most of the time and the regular catches all the time,” Courtney said.

After the game, UVA head coach Tony Elliott praised Courtney’s performance but noted that No. 5 had not been flawless.

“Even though he got the reverse for the touchdown,” Elliott said, “we gotta work on making sure that we don’t let that ball hit the ground [on kickoffs]. So there will be opportunities to continue to coach him, and hopefully this boosts his confidence, because we’re going to need him. He’s a really, really good football player.”

Elliott said he pushes Courtney hard. “He’s a guy that comes from a great high school program that’s used to winning championships, and a big reason why we wanted him in our program was to bring that type of leadership and toughness,” Elliott said.

During training camp last month, Elliott said, Courtney “hit a little spell where he dropped a ball or two and wasn’t at his best, and then we challenged him and just said, ‘Man, you’re better than that. We expect better than that, and the way that you fix it is go back to work.’ ”

Courtney was coming off a hip injury that had sidelined him for a couple of days, he said, and “I was a little rusty. I ended up dropping a few of those easy catches I knew I could make. So I had to bounce back the next week, and then I felt like I was right back on track.”

Courtney, who was born in Fairfax County, grew up in Manassas. He made the varsity team at Freedom as a ninth-grader but played only defensive back that season. He started playing receiver as a 10^th-grader, and he also excelled at that position and as a return specialist. Still, some colleges preferred him at safety, including the Big Ten program to which Courtney committed in July 2023.

“I was really all in on Indiana,” Courtney said.

In November 2023, however, the Hoosiers fired head coach Tom Allen. As Courtney re-assessed his options, he decided he wanted to play on offense in college, not on defense. He decommitted from Indiana and re-opened his recruitment.

Less than an hour later, Courtney said, he heard from Virginia’s coaches. “I was like, ‘OK, I know they really want me to come here.’ It was authentic. It wasn’t fake. They really wanted me here.”

Mims said: “We really jumped on him. We got him on an official visit, and he fell in love. We fell in love with him. He’s got a wonderful family. He was such a great fit for our program, and it was really a no-brainer for us.”

Elliott, who’s in his fourth year at UVA, has prioritized recruiting this state, and he knew Courtney had received stellar coaching and played in a championship environment at Freedom.

“So that was a huge part of keeping a player like that from leaving the state and going to the Big Ten,” Elliott said. “It was important to keep him home.”

Courtney committed to UVA about a week after the state final at Scott Stadium. “It’s about an hour and a half away from home, so staying close is important to me, representing Virginia is important to me, and also playing offense.”

As a true freshman in 2024, Courtney appeared in nine of the Hoos’ 12 games, with starts against Boston College and Louisville. He finished the season with 12 receptions for 114 yards.

In spring practice this year, Mims said, Courtney played as well as any of Virginia’s wideouts.

“We knew back when he was coming out of high school what kind of player he could be and he would be,” Mims said, “but he really flourished and found himself back in the spring. And so that kind of showed us, OK, we’re trending upward with this kid. He’s just been so much more consistent in the way that he approaches ball on his day-to-day and how he handles his business. He still has so much growth and so much room to grow, but I’ve been really, really proud of him.”

The biggest challenge for Courtney, Mims said, has been learning “what it takes to be the best player that he can be and understanding that that’s a daily process. You can’t take days off, and I think he’s starting to realize that if he wants to be the player that we know that he can be and that he knows that he can be, it’s got to be an everyday deal. He’s got to bring it every single day. And he’s done a much better job of doing that.”

Virginia is deep and talented at wide receiver. Ten Cavaliers have at least one reception this season, led by Trell Harris (14 catches for 176 yards). Cam Ross and Jahmal Edrine have caught 12 and 11 passes, respectively.

“When I took over this role, I wanted to build as much competitive depth as absolutely possible,” said Mims, who’s in his third year as Virginia’s receivers coach. “Three games into this year, this is probably the deepest that our room has been. We’ve got a multitude of guys that can go out and make plays and that have been able to do that this year, and all it does is just make each other better. They feed off of one another. They love one another.”

To be part of that group, Courtney said, is “great, because everybody’s so talented. There’s not really a drop-off anywhere. We all can rotate and play anywhere, really. So it’s just great knowing you can trust your brother, your teammate, to play at the same standard you know to play at.”

That Courtney gravitated to football as a boy was no surprise. His father, Devlin, starred at West Potomac High School in Alexandria and later played tailback at Norfolk State.

“He always tells me how good of a running back he was,” Courtney said, smiling.

If tales of his dad’s exploits can cause Courtney to occasionally roll his eyes, he acknowledges those accomplishments and wants to add his own feats to family lore.

Courtney made frequent trips to the end zone during his career at Freedom, and “I’m looking forward to doing the same thing in college,” he said.

To receive Jeff White’s articles by email, click the appropriate box in this link to subscribe.