Next step for Xavier Kelly awaits at Clemson

Cheree Kelly looked at her son, Xavier, on Thursday afternoon and did that thing that moms do sometimes.

She got really sentimental.

“I feel like I just had him,” she said. “And now he’s leaving. I can’t believe it.”

Kelly takes the next, biggest step in his journey this month when the 6-foot-5, 255-pound defensive end from East starts summer classes and workouts at Clemson – a football team that has its sights set on a national championship after losing to Alabama in last year’s title game.

“I’m leaving Saturday to go see my father in Savannah (Ga.) for about a week, then he’s dropping me off at the dorms on the 19th and the grind starts,” Kelly said. “I’ll miss Wichita, but I’m really excited about this.”

Auburn opens the season Sept. 3 at Auburn, and Kelly, a four-star recruit, could be in the mix right away because of his freakish physical talents and because Clemson’s two starting defensive ends from 2015 — Shaq Lawson and Kevin Dodd — left school early and were picked in the NFL Draft.

It was the fourth time in the last five years that Clemson has had a defensive end picked in the draft.

“The coaches have told me that physically, they think I’m ready to play,” Kelly said. “What it comes down to is making sure I get the mental aspect of the game down, of understanding what they expect and getting that mentality where you don’t give up on plays and you finish through each drill. ... I’m going to give 100 percent and listen and learn and hope that puts me in the mix.

“I understand what a huge leap it is to go from playing high school to college ... you watch the defensive ends for Clemson and the one thing they all have in common is that they all have a high motor and every play, they understand you could be the next man up.”

Kelly could have graduated early and enrolled at Clemson in January, but chose to stay in Wichita and play basketball for his senior season, helping lead the Aces to the Class 6A tournament for the third straight year as a starter. His younger brother, Elijah, also plays basketball for East.

He’s stayed in touch with the other members of his recruiting class at Clemson via social media.

“I talked to the coaches at Clemson about (playing basketball), and they told me just to enjoy my senior year and be ready to go in June,” Kelly said. “They wanted me to have a good high school experience. A lot of people told me I shouldn’t play because there was a chance I could get injured, but I didn’t listen to all that. I wanted to play basketball and I followed my heart.”

Kelly’s first home game at Clemson’s famed “Death Valley” is Sept. 10 against Troy. It’s Clemson’s entrance into the stadium — rubbing Howard’s Rock and running down The Hill — that Brent Musburger once referred to as the “most exciting 25 seconds in college football.”

“It’s going to be amazing, but you can’t forget about the most important thing,” Kelly said, smiling. “And that’s that you don’t slip and fall.”

This story was originally published June 9, 2016 at 4:59 PM with the headline "Next step for Xavier Kelly awaits at Clemson."