“I knew as soon as I stepped on campus for my visit, this is where I had to be,” Gavin Lochow said. “It wasn’t just, ‘This is where I want to be.’ It was, ‘I have to be here.’
“It was destined.”
That wasn’t just some kind of teenage fantasy.
With apologies to Beyonce and the rest of the once-famed girls’ group, Lochow truly is Destiny’s Child.
You saw that everywhere you looked Saturday at Welcome Stadium where the Dayton Flyers – led in a big way by his pass-catching heroics – overwhelmed Thomas More University, 38-0.
Up in the stands sat Dr. Steve Lochow who 32 years ago was an All-American defensive lineman for the Flyers.
For him, Saturday bordered on surreal.
“I look up behind me today and see Coach (Rick) Chamberlin sitting there and up above (doing the radio broadcast in the press box) is Coach (Mike) Kelly. It’s hard to put into words, but it made me kind of tearful,” he said in a suddenly-wavering voice, the mention of the UD men who once coached him now filling him with emotion.
Sitting next to Steve was his wife Amy – also now a doctor in Huntington, West Virginia – who 32 years ago was Amy Ditty, a Division I tennis player at Furman.
Back then, every fall weekend that the Flyers played at home, she would drive nearly eight hours from her Greenville, S.C. campus to Dayton to sit in the stands and cheer for Steve, who had been her high school boyfriend back in Russell, Kentucky, which is just across the Ohio River from Ironton.
“It’s just amazing,” Amy said. “I never thought that 30 years later I’d be back at this field again watching my son.”
She and Steve and their other three children – daughter Haven and sons Torin and Trevor —were part of a group of some 35 people from back home who were at Welcome Stadium to support Gavin in the Flyers home opener.
His middle school coach was here and so was his Huntington High coach – Billy Seals – who wore a special t-shirt he’d had made up picturing Gavin and his high school teammate, Thomas More defensive lineman Gavin Adkins, on the front.
Out on the field, Lochow, the Flyers’ junior receiver, began making one catch after another. He had three in UD’s first eight plays.
He’s Dayton’s leading receiver this season. Saturday he finished with a game-high nine catches for 83 yards and two touchdowns from quarterback Bryce Schondelmyer.
A week earlier – in a season-opening 24-14 loss at Eastern Illinois – he led the Flyers with six catches for 124 yards and a 48-yard touchdown.
After Saturday ‘s game, Lochow stood outside the Flyers’ dressing room and, with his face still painted with eye black war paint and that sleeve of colorful tattoos covering his left arm, he looked a little like some comic book action hero.
When he was growing up he said he knew little of his dad’s UD past: “I’d watched a few clips but he didn’t really talk about it a lot…I did see some of his old helmets in the garage where we worked out. I left them there. They looked a little too nice to be wearing in our (pick-up) games.
“But it’s pretty crazy that now I’m putting on the same helmet and playing on the same field he did.
“All this has definitely created a stronger bond between me and my dad, and me and my mom, too. Every day this summer, she was out there on the field helping me work out.”
Amy later explained: “I’d work the JUGS gun, throwing him passes. He’d catch hundreds of balls every day.”
As he thought about all this Saturday, Steve – once a stellar Flyers defender – now found himself defenseless as a surge of emotion hit him like a massive, pancake-minded offensive lineman.
That was especially the case when Kelly suddenly rounded the steps on his way down from the press box and came right towards him.
“Every time I see you up there takes me back 30 years ago,” Steve said with a cracking voice. “I’m so thankful ..I got…”
Kelly, his countenance now beginning to melt from the memories, waved him off and whispered, “No! No, I can’t….”
As he hustled past, Kelly was wrestling with his own tears.
Once his former coach was out of ear shot, Steve pointed to his own glistening eyes:
“I’m sorry for this…I just love UD football so much.”
‘Highly competitive’
“He comes from a great family,” Seals said of Gavin, who had been his record-setting quarterback. “His parents were college athletes, and they know what it takes. They instilled it in all their kids.”
Amy’s late sister – Julie Ditty Qualls – was a stellar example for the Lochow kids, as well. She was an All-American tennis player at Vanderbilt, a top 100 pro with the WTA and had been coaching at the University of Louisville when she died of breast cancer in 2021 at age 42.
One of Gavin’s prominent tattoos is dedicated to her.
Gavin’s sister Haven – now in dental school at the University of Kentucky – played soccer and tennis at Georgetown College. Torin played basketball at Marietta College and 17-year-old Trevor plays football at Huntington High.
“Gavin will tell you he’s the best of all of them and Haven will say the same thing,” Amy laughed. “They’re all highly competitive.”
Twice named West Virginia’s high school quarterback of the year, Gavin amassed 8,238 total career yards and 112 touchdowns, 62 from TD passes and 49 running the ball.
“He’s probably the hardest working young man I’ve ever been around,” said Seals.
He was recruited to UD by Chamberlin who soon retired. Andrews ended up signing him.
Both head coaches had figured he might best serve the Flyers as a defensive back, but Andrews said after studying Lochow’s highlight film he realized: “He needs to have the ball in his hands.”
They asked him to be a wide receiver and though he’d always been a quarterback, he’d embraced the idea.
“That first year he said he really didn’t know what he was doing,” Amy said. “He said he just ran around and caught the ball.”
Even so, Lochow appeared in 11 games, started four, and had 35 receptions and five touchdowns.
He credited his coaches and upperclassmen for helping him, especially senior receiver and team co-captain Derek Willits: “He taught me a lot, both how to be on the field and off.”
Last season Lochow won second team All-Pioneer Football League honors after making 59 catches for 488 yards and five TDs; rushing 20 times for 154 yards and another score and averaging 20 yards on his 12 kick returns.
This season he’s off to his best start ever.
Saturday his first score came with just over six minutes left in the second quarter. Schondelmyer was searching back and forth for a receiver, when Lochow cut back across the rear of the end zone, got a step ahead of defensive back Syncere Jones and gathered in the three-yard TD pass.
Then with 86 seconds left in the half, UD faced a fourth-and-12 situation from the Saints’ 34. Schondelmyer spied Lochow who was double covered, but still made the 18-yard grab.
Two plays later, with Saints linebacker Japhia Kennedy right on his hip, Lochow made a diving catch in the left rear corner of the endzone for his second touchdown.
“He’s really worked at it and become a polished route runner,” Andrews said. “He gives us great effort every play.”
‘A lot more to come’
Before every game Steve Lochow goes out in search of some sliced turkey for Gavin – who in a combination of superstition and sensible diet – eats the night before every game and again four hours before kickoff.
“That’s my protein,” he said with a shrug.
“He’s very dedicated to everything he does and he eats really clean,” Andrews said with a growing smile. “I took him to lunch this summer to a barbecue place, and he wouldn’t even get iced tea. He said, ‘No, I only drink water.’”
It’s part of his effort to be the best at whatever he does.
And that includes the classroom. His parents were student-athletes with an emphasis on the books. Today Steve’s an orthopedic surgeon and Amy’s a pediatrician.
“Gavin knows this (football) is going to be done in a couple of years and the education you get at UD can set you up for the rest of your life,” Steve said.
Before that though, Gavin wants to get the most out of his football career.
“I think we’re just now starting to see his potential at wide receiver,” Amy said. “With the way he approaches everything, I think there’s going to be a lot more to come.”
He is, after all, Destiny’s Child.
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