Campbell football coach Braxton Harris is tired of hearing about all those games his team could have won last season.
He’s tired of being reminded that his Camels led in the fourth quarter against FCS opponents nine times but only closed out two of them. He knows the final number that mattered: 2-10.
But those close calls also help explain why there is optimism in Buies Creek entering Harris’ third season. The program is not that far from getting over the hump (pun intended).
Campbell returns starting quarterback Kamden Sixkiller, leading rusher J.J. Cowan and experience along the offensive line. They’ve retooled the defense and brought in a new coordinator with a fresh approach.
Harris believes the Camels have upgraded the roster through the transfer portal while continuing to build around North Carolina high school talent.
More importantly, Harris believes Campbell has reached the point where it has to stop talking about how close it is.
The Camels have to start winning those games. That message has shaped nearly everything Campbell has done since January.
Here are five things to know about Campbell football entering the 2026 season, plus players to watch and games that could define the season.
Campbell Camels Football At A Glance
2025 Record: 2-10
2025 Conference: 2-6 CAA
2026 Season Opener: Campbell at ETSU, Saturday, Aug. 29
Head Coach: Braxton Harris (3rd year here)
Record at School: 5-19
Offensive Coordinator: Matt Kubik (3rd year here)
Defensive Coordinator: Brandon Butcher (1st year here)
Predicted Finish in Conference: 8th out of 13 teams
Preseason All-Conference:
- LB DaVonyae Pettis (honorable mention)
Five Things to Know About Campbell
1. Campbell spent the off-season learning how to win
Campbell had as many opportunities as anybody in the CAA to win games last season but didn’t finish enough of them. Harris’ response wasn’t primarily to dream up new schemes or reassess goal-line situations. He essentially turned everything the team did together into a competition.
Players competed twice a day. Plate holds. Push-ups. Rock-paper-scissors. Wrestling. Everything had a winner and loser, and Harris said players actually had weekly win-loss records posted in the football building.
“We’ve trained in a way that we hate to lose,” Harris said at CAA Media Day in late July. “A lot of people like to win. I think here at Campbell we like the idea of winning. We have not always hated to lose.”
2. QB Kamden Sixkiller is growing into the job – and a leadership role
Sixkiller said during CAA Media Day that 2026 will be the first time since middle school that he’s been the starter two years in a row at the same place. Returning a starting quarterback at the FCS level in this day and age is a big deal. So is returning your offensive coordinator (Matt Kubik).
“I feel a lot more comfortable. I feel like I’ve got a lot more belief in my guys,” Sixkiller said back in the spring. “I know who they are, and I know the work they’re doing.”
Sixkiller isn’t simply Campbell’s returning starting quarterback anymore. He’s becoming one of the players his teammates look to for leadership. That is key for a team looking to take a big step forward.
3. The Camels think continuity can make their offense better
Sixkiller isn’t the only key piece returning to the offense. Leading rusher J.J. Cowan returns. A number of players come back on the offensive front, including veterans like Mason Merriwether and Kameron Durant.
Campbell isn’t a team with a new signal caller and a rebuilt O-line learning a new system. Those growing pains came last season. Adding notable transfers who can be true playmakers also should boost the offensive output
4. The Camels believe they have found “Campbell guys”
Harris likes the talent he has assembled for his third season as Campbell’s head coach. It may be his best yet. But he likes it more that he’s getting the right type of guys for his system and the type of culture he’s trying to build in Buies Creek – blue-collar, accountable, a brotherhood.
“We wanted to make sure that guys when they chose Campbell they understood the challenge that Campbell was,” Harris said. “Campbell’s not easy. Campbell’s not for everybody … We’re gonna push you. We’re going to take you to places you couldn’t get to yourself because you are a part of this program … It’s going to be hard.”
"We told them it was going to be hard. We told them the CAA was one of the toughest conferences in the country" 🔊@GoCamelsFB's Braxton Harris speaks on the message he gave to his squad as it gears up for the season pic.twitter.com/TCaqoKzc23 — CAA Football (@CAAFootball) July 23, 2026
5. The roster is increasingly built around North Carolina
The Camels continue to lean heavily into talent from across the Old North State. That’s evident on the recruiting trail, where Campbell already has six commitments from 2027 North Carolina high school prospects. It’s also evident on the current roster, where Harris says “over 52 percent” of players are from North Carolina.
That matters for a program still trying to establish itself in one of the tougher conferences in the FCS – and in a state with 14 total Division I programs. Harris wants players who don’t simply see Campbell as another stop along the way. He wants players who understand what the program is trying to build and see playing in Buies Creek as an opportunity worth investing in.
Harris pointed to transfer DaVonyae Pettis from Shelby as a prime example. Pettis started his college career at The Citadel and has totally bought in since arriving in Buies Creek.
“He’s a North Carolina kid. Born and raised here,” Harris said. “When he walks out on that football field, man, it means something to him … One of the big pieces for us is we had to recruit high school kids here in the state of North Carolina that can see the value of that.”
Players To Watch
Kamden Sixkiller, QB
The returning starter says he’s much more comfortable in Campbell’s offense heading into this season. His first year wasn’t too shabby – 2,102 passing yards, 12 touchdowns. As Sixkiller goes, so goes the offense.
J.J. Cowan, RB
The hometown hero from nearby Triton High was the Camels’ leading rusher a year ago, finishing with 402 yards and five touchdowns over nine games. If the Camels can unlock Cowan and a stronger run game to complement Sixkiller, that bodes well for the win column.
Kameron Durant and Mason Merriwether, OLs
Two of the Camels’ most experienced trenchworkers have 828 snaps and 796 snaps, respectively, of game experience. Between them, the duo have only allowed two sacks.
DaVonyae Pettis, LB
Pre-season all-conference pick is one of the key leaders on a defense that is retooling. Pettis accounted for 8.0 tackles-for-loss and 4.0 sacks last season, while forcing three fumbles.
Jyron Waiters, WR
Former ECU Pirate had a dominant high school career, catching 33 touchdown passes and earning 2,445 yards in receptions. He could become one of Sixkiller’s top targets.
Games That Could Define The Season
North Carolina A&T at Campbell, Sept. 19
The Aggies rallied to beat the Camels last season in Greensboro, returning two kicks for touchdowns in the fourth quarter. This year’s meeting feels like a must-win at home for Campbell to get CAA play off to a strong start. Lose here, and some of those doubts from last season could begin creeping back in with a full conference schedule still ahead.
Towson at Campbell, Oct. 17
Campbell’s final memory from 2025 was of Towson’s Cleveland Charlton scoring the go-ahead touchdown against them in the final seconds of the season finale. That defeat left the program 2-10 and asking lots of questions. These are exactly the types of games the Camels have to learn how to win. Turn a few close losses against evenly matched CAA opponents into victories, and Campbell could begin climbing the conference ladder.
Campbell at Elon, Nov. 14
Campbell has never beaten Elon in football in four meetings, but three of the four have been decided by a touchdown or less – including last season’s 31-24 defeat. By mid-November, this game could tell us plenty about how far the Camels have come. A first win over Elon would be an important milestone for a program with ambitions of becoming one of the CAA’s top teams.
Quotable
“Winning is not something you just do on Saturdays. It’s a lifestyle. How we go to class, how we clean up after ourselves in the cafeteria, how we how we go about getting our bodies right – preparing for the season to come. When you do all those things, winning just happens” – linebacker DaVonyae Pettis
“We’ve done a ton of situational things. How do we put you in a spot where you have the confidence to be able to go and win that rep … We think that’s the difference in the fourth quarter. It’s not third and long. It’s not third and one. It’s not red zone defense. It’s our mentality. Can we go in and have the confidence in the belief system that we can know what the outcome is going to be.” – Coach Braxton Harris when asked how to turn close losses from 2025 into wins in 2026.
The Final Word
One thing may have gotten overlooked during Campbell’s 2-10 season a year ago, when seven fourth-quarter leads evaporated into losses: The Camels kept getting back up off the mat.
That is nothing to gloss over. It would have been easy after two or three heartbreaking losses to fold up the tents and coast through the rest of the seasons. Campbell didn’t do that. They kept competing until the final whistle of the final game.
Harris and his team learned plenty about perseverance last season. This offseason, they’ve focused on something different — learning how to win every rep and, as Harris puts it, learning to hate losing.
Now those lessons give way to the real tests, starting Saturday, Aug. 29 at East Tennessee State, one of the top teams in the SoCon.
Campbell believes it has more experience, more continuity and a roster increasingly built in the image Harris is striving for. But close losses and encouraging signs can only carry a program so far.
The Camels have spent an offseason learning how to win.
Now they have to prove they can.
🔗 More Campbell and FCS Football Coverage
- 2026 Campbell football schedule
- CAA football standings
- North Carolina FCS football schedules
- Game Day Central
