Driven to Hoist Hardware, Glenvar QB Dawyot is Re-Writing the VHSL Record Book (VIDEO)
Glenvar High School quarterback Brody Dawyot owns the VHSL career football record for touchdown passes.
However, the 6-foot-5, 223-pound senior is missing one thing that his older brother, Owyn, and older sister, Daisy Ann, can claim:
A State Championship.
The Glenvar star and his team came close in 2024, falling 28-24 to eventual champion Graham in a Class 2 semifinal in Bluefield.
Glenvar appears poised for another long postseason run. The Highlanders (9-0) have outscored nine opponents 422-35 with Dawyot at the helm as a four-year starter in the Three Rivers District team’s spread offense.
In last Friday’s 56-6 victory over Patrick County, the big Glenvar QB made his own mark, tossing five TD passes to give him 123 for his career, eclipsing the old VHSL mark of 119 set by Freedom-Woodbridge’s Tristan Evans-Trujillo in 2023.
With 40 career rushing TD’s added to his passing numbers, Dawyot has been responsible for 163 total offensive TDs (passing, rushing, receiving), 22 shy of the all-time VHSL mark of 185 set in 1997 by Hampton’s Ronald Curry.
Dawyot also is 15 away from Curry’s single-season record 61 TD’s accounted for, currently standing fourth in that category.
His 11,252 yards of total offense rank him fifth in VHSL history with a shot at eclipsing all but the 11,252 yards put up by former Gretna quarterback Vic Hall. With 9,016 career passing yards, Dawyot would need an epic postseason run to reach the 11,380 total achieved by former Oscar Smith QB Shon Mitchell.
What does it all add up to for the Glenvar senior?
“It feels amazing, but I’m not really worried about that stuff,” Dawyot said. “It’s just numbers. The only thing I’m worried about is getting a state title with my team. Without them, none of that would have been possible. It’s not a one-person sport.”
Dawyot would rather point to Glenvar’s 40-9 overall record in the last four years, part of a 119-28 mark under veteran Coach Kevin Clifford over the past 11-plus seasons.
Dawyot came to Glenvar after playing Middle School Football at Andrew Lewis, the feeder program to Salem High School. He lived in Salem through the 7th grade, but he moved to Roanoke County before his 8th-grade year. Dawyot’s family paid tuition for one year so he could finish middle school at Andrew Lewis.
When it came time to start High School, Dawyot was wearing Glenvar green and gold instead of Salem maroon and white.
Possibly? Likely? Definitely? Would Dawyot have been Salem’s starting QB for three or four years?
But did football play a role in his decision to leave the Spartans, where 10 VHSL Football Championships have been won with an offense featuring a devastating run game mixed with timely pass plays.
“Football … a little bit,” he said. “I’ve always known Coach Clifford. He’s always been a family friend. I feel like, coming to Glenvar, it would help me in the long run. It was definitely a big change coming from a 4A school to a 2A school, but I’ve made friends that I call my brothers. I’ve met a lot of great people. It’s my home now.”
Dawyot supplanted incumbent sophomore quarterback Eli Taylor as Glenvar’s starter during his freshman season in 2022 after joining the program at the beginning of fall camp.
Taylor was thrust into the job as freshman and handled the job admirably. He was the starter early in the 2022 season, but even before he sustained an injury it was apparent the new kid was destined for the role.
Taylor ultimately transferred to Salem, where he started a quarterback for two seasons, taking the Spartans within a whisker of a 2023 Class 4 Championship before they lost 21-14 to Phoebus on the last play of the game.
Taylor recently earned a start as a sophomore quarterback for Roanoke College until suffering a knee injury.
Clifford said the decision to insert Dawyot at QB was tough but not difficult.
“Brody hadn’t been with us all summer and Eli had, and Eli had been with us really every day since eighth grade. We loved Eli. That was a really tough decision for me. He worked his butt off. He was a Glenvar kid. His dad was coaching with us. His dad played here.
“It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but Brody is Brody and, you know. Brody said, ‘Coach, I’ll play tight end.’ But I said, ‘Brody, that’s not how we run the program.’ “
VIDEO – Brody Dawyot Discusses Setting VHSL TD Pass Record:
The Highlanders have been humming ever since.
Dawyot’s first big splash came when he threw six TD passes — five in the first half — in a 2022 Region 2C playoff victory over Floyd County.
That season ended with a 38-33 loss to perennial region and Class 2 powerhouse Appomattox County in a game where Dawyot passed for 199 yards and ran for 51.
Dawyot had monster numbers in 2024 with 2,964 passing yards and 49 TD throws, while rushing for 701 yards and 12 scores. Through nine games this season, the kid with size 11 hands has 2,004 yards and 28 TDs through the air with another 590 yards and 16 TD’s rushing.
He also plays defensive end for a team that has allowed more than one touchdown in a game just once in 2025.
In the last two seasons Dawyot has recorded 29 quarterback sacks and another 29 tackles for loss.
“He made a play against Radford where he came across the field at [defensive] end,” Clifford said. “They had a receiver and we missed a tackle. He was running down the field, a track guy from Radford who runs the 100 meters for them, and Brody ran him down.
“If he played every quarter of every game he’d have well over 3,000 yards. We only threw the ball three times in the second half last week. If he played in the Tidewater or Richmond I think he’d have these numbers because he’d be surrounded by a different caliber of players.”
VIDEO – Brody Dawyot Talks Charlotte Commitment:
Dawyot committed in June to American Conference member UNC Charlotte. He added later offers from Connecticut and Virginia although Clifford said UVa’s interest appears to have cooled.
Clifford believes his star athlete is being under-recruited.
“[A] Wake Forest [coach] came in here and said, ‘He’s the best quarterback I’ve seen so far, and I’ve seen the top quarterbacks in North Carolina.’ And they didn’t offer him.
“Other people who have recruited him have said if he doesn’t play at Charlotte, someone will recruit him in the portal. A lot of these bigger schools have six, seven [staffers] who live in the portal. That’s what they do all day. They’re going to recruit kids. Whether it’s legal or not, they’re going to do it.”
Dawyot said Charlotte recruited him as an “offensive athlete,” either at quarterback or tight end.
“I’m still 100 percent committed to Charlotte,” he said. “They’re the ones that have always believed in me since they first started reaching out to me. I’m going to start off in the quarterback room, but they said they’re also going to look at me as a tight end so we’ll just see where the wind takes me.”
Dawyot, who also has displayed his athletic upset for Glenvar on the basketball floor, will not play hoops this season. In fact, he soon will graduate with plans to begin college in January.
Dawyot and Glenvar have other business first, like that State Championship for instance.
His brother, Owyn, made the winning free-throw for Cave Spring High in a 76-75 victory over Petersburg in the 2022 Class 3 Boys Basketball Championship. His sister, Daisy, was part of two VHSL Class 2 Volleyball Championship teams at Glenvar.
That could make life rough at home.
“It’s been good around the house,” said Dawyot, whose brother, Tre, is a senior wide receiver for Glenvar. “They’re encouraging me to keep working and hopefully join along with that.”
Dawyot threw three TD passes and three interceptions last year in the semifinal loss to Graham when Clifford said, “We couldn’t keep him upright enough.”
Glenvar, which won the 2014 VHSL Group 2A State Championship under Clifford, will have to negotiate the usual path through Region 2C before reaching another semifinal.
Last year’s loss might be gone, but it’s not forgotten.
“It’s stuck with me a lot, but it’s mostly stuck with our whole returning team,” Dawyot said. “It motivates us every day. We want to get out there and work so that doesn’t happen again. It definitely lingered on a little bit. It left a sour taste in my mouth, but it’s in the past. I live by ‘everything happens for a reason,’ so I feel like that was my motivation for my senior year.”
BRODY DAWYOT BY THE NUMBERS:
Year — Pass stats……….Rush stats
2022 — 1,916, 25 TD………507, 4 TD
2023 — 2,132, 21 TD………439, 8 TD
2024 — 2,964, 49 TD………701, 12 TD
2025 — 2,004, 28 TD………590, 16 TD
Totals–9,016, 123 TD…….2,236, 40 TD
- Stats as of Mon. Oct. 27, 2025
Robert Anderson has worked for well over 40 years in Virginia as a sports writer, including at The Roanoke Times before retiring in June 2022. He has won multiple Virginia Press Association awards for sports writing portfolio and has been honored nationally by The Associated Press Sports Editors. Robert was inducted earlier this year into the Virginia High School Hall of Fame.