There have been plenty of great running backs come through Brandywine High School over the years, but none may be better than senior Jordan Abrams.

Abrams is just 25-yards shy of breaking the school record for the Bobcats, and it should not take long on opening night against visiting Coloma to snap the mark held by Marty Ward.

Ward rushed for 3,096 yards in his career. Abrams enters the season with 3,071 yards in three years.

Record-breaking running backs are not an uncommon thing in high school football, but what makes Abrams’ accomplishment stand out is the fact that for the first three years of his high school career he shared the backfield with an equally talented runner in Robert Gordon.

Gordon is gone, transferred to Griffiths, Indiana, so that means Abrams will be the featured back in the Brandywine offense for the 2019 campaign.

As a freshman, no one would have predicted Abrams would need 25 yards on opening night to become the school’s all-time leading rusher. He admittedly had some issues and needed to mature.

“My freshman year, I had some problems, but then I matured my sophomore year,” he said. “We had some goals my sophomore year, but we fell short. Last year, we came close. We want to make school history this year.”

School history would be winning a first-round playoff game and advancing to the district finals.

And mature he has. According to veteran coach Mike Nate, who will see the school record fall twice in his 10-year tenure at the helm of the Brandywine program, Abrams not only turned into a good football play, but he turned into a good teammate and a good person.

“He has gotten better every year,” Nate said. “When Jordan was a young player he struggled at times, but he has found himself as a man and as an athlete. He has made himself better through hard work. He wants to stay in excellence and to do that, you have to be in excellence all the time. It is not a sometime thing. He has matured into a fine back and person.”

Along the way, Abrams has helped the Brandywine program become one of the top teams in the BCS Athletic Conference Blue Division. The Bobcats were 7-3 last season, division champions and a state qualifier.

Abrams’ sophomore season was a mixture of good and bad as Brandywine went 5-4 and missed out on the postseason. As a freshman, the Bobcats were trying to reload after a senior class that went 28-11, including back-to-back 9-1 campaigns and appearances in the state playoffs three out of the four years.

The Bobcats struggled in 2016, going 4-5.

“As a freshman, I wasn’t even concerned about that,” Abrams said. “I was just focused on winning and proving I belonged on the varsity. After that, once they told me about the record, it has been one of my goals to break it and the single-season record before I leave here.”

One of the games that stands out in the mind of Nate as a favorite of Abrams’ was last year’s game against Parchment with the playoffs hanging in the balance.