If there was a book about the life of Hilldale senior running back Byrce Chartney, it might be titled something like “Torn between the worlds of football.” That’s because he’s had a love-hate relationship with the two versions of football in the world-futbol (as it’s known in foreign lands) and football, American style. The son of missionaries, Bryce grew up in Morocco where futbol (or soccer as we know it) is king and he got pretty good at it. They moved to the U.S. for what they thought would be just a temporary stay when he was 13, living in the Edmond area before resettling in Muskogee his freshman year. He had become burned out on soccer, so he decided to try the American version of football. “The year he came we had a pretty good running back in Eric Virgil, so Bryce played Eric on the scout team and became a tackling dummy,” recalled Hilldale coach David Blevins with a chuckle. Bryce doesn’t remember that year with as much humor. “It was brutal,” he said. “I literally had a target on my back working against massive human beings. I remember one time Evan Keefe (6-3, 275), who went on to play at Air Force, picked me (5-9, 150) up and carried me backwards about two feet off the ground before depositing me ungently to the ground.” Chartney played soccer exclusively his sophomore year but then came back to play both versions last year. His football season ended, though, with a shoulder injury in the third game and he had to have surgery. When he returned this year, the coaches told him they would try to work him in as running back for some plays, maybe five a game. He was injured for the first game of the season, but in the second game- the Battle for the Rock with Fort Gibson- he carried, not five, but 18 times for 188 yards and his senior season of futbol, I mean football, was off and running, literally. “I can’t say enough good things about him,” said Blevins. “He’s shown a lot of determination to be successful in football, and he’s become a good leader for the team who does a really good job of developing our younger kids.”
