The start of fall camp was eagerly awaited by new NC State offensive lineman Chandler Zavala, but there was a time where Zavala would not have cared near as much.

Football was not Zavala’s first love. When he was at Forest Park High in Woodbridge, Va., basketball and soccer were his original sports. His grandparents were the ones who loved football. Unfortunately, they passed away while Zavala was approaching his senior year.

“That junior going into my senior year, I decided to give football a shot in honor of them,” Zavala recalled.

The tall, lean Zavala, at this point around 6-foot-5, 250 pounds, may not fit the definition of an instant success in his new sport, but one small school saw enough in hi to give him an opportunity.

Fairmont State is a Division II program in the small town of Fairmont, W.Va., located in the northern part of the state near its border with Pennsylvania with a population of less than 20,000.

The school itself has about 3,500 undergrads and is not known as a gridiron powerhouse. Before Zavala arrived it had not had an All-American since 1994 or a 1,000-yard rusher since 2007.

But for Zavala, the school represented his best option.

“It worked out,” Zavala said. “I’ve only one year coming out of high school with experience playing football. Fairmont State took a chance on me when they didn’t have to. I took that.”

Two people probably deserve a lot of credit for turning Zavala into a football-loving, Division II All-American guard who is now getting a chance to play in the ACC at NC State.

One is his father Demetrio Zavala, a prized-winning cook. With his dad’s help, Zavala gained 60 pounds between his freshmen and sophomore years at Fairmont State.

“He eats very clean, even though his food has a lot of cholesterol in it sometimes,” Zavala said while breaking into a smile. “He gave me the ins and outs of what to eat, what I shouldn’t eat. … He would make sure I ate at least four times a day then I would have snacks like protein shakes and all of that.”

The other is Brian Miller, who was hired as Fairmont State’s offensive line coach when Zavala was a sophomore.

“He took my game to the next level,” Zavala recalled.

As appreciative as Zavala was for Fairmont State, when Division II canceled its 2020 football season due to COVID-19, he did not have any hesitation about entering the transfer portal. Considering he was honorable mention All-American in 2018 when he helped Fairmont State have its first 1,000-yard rusher in 11 years, Zavala was a popular target.

Virginia, Charlotte, East Carolina, Toledo and Western Kentucky also offered him, but NC State had an advantage.

“My mother moved here last year. She lives in Raleigh,” Zavala noted. “My grandmother is only three hours away. She’s in Virginia. My dad is in Florida, and he travels all the time. It was kind of perfect.”

As expected, there has been the adjustments from playing in a D-2 school in northern West Virginia to an ACC program in the Triangle.

“I would say maybe the hottest you’ll get [in Fairmont] maybe it’s like 80, and it’ll be a little breeze,” Zavala stated. “Here in North Carolina, this is just straight humidity.”

There was also getting used to size and speed of a Power Five defensive line.

“At the Division II level, you have competition and a lot of people play at the D2 level, but when you come to the D1 level, everybody across the board can play,” Zavala pointed out.

However, Zavala has found himself fitting in, thanks to some advice from his new offensive line coach, John Garrison.

“Coach Garrison said one thing to me when I came here, ‘Just don’t try to fit in, just work and you’ll fit right in with everybody else,’” Zavala remembered. “As the older guys started to see me work, they started to take me in.”

That bond has built to the point where Zavala and his father are planning to cook a meal for the team before a game when the timing works, the type of event that Zavala didn’t even consider five years ago.

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