Stacy McCord remembers the phone call from the other middle school mother.

The mom was crying. Her daughter, a special-needs student, was sitting alone at lunch and other kids were teasing her. Kyle McCord noticed. He left his table, sat with the girl and struck up a friendly conversation.

“He didn’t want her to feel upset,” Stacy recalled. “The next thing you know, another kid comes over, and now the table has shifted, and now they’re all sitting with this girl.

“The mom called me and said, ‘You don’t know what this means to her. As her mother, you’re sending your kids off to school, especially when they have special needs, and kids are making fun of them. It’s a horrible situation, and Kyle just made it better.’ ”

Stacy McCord said that story exemplifies her son, that he’s a kind soul to whom people gravitate and follow.

McCord now has been tasked to lead on a much bigger stage. After a prolonged quarterback competition with redshirt freshman Devin Brown, McCord started Ohio State’s opener Saturday against Indiana and will again against Youngstown State this week.

For McCord, it’s been a long time coming. He committed to Ohio State five years ago as a high school sophomore. He’s now in his third year in the program. In an age of instant gratification and the transfer portal, that could seem for a five-star prospect like an eternity to wait.

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But McCord has always had the maturity to see the big picture and not be tempted by anything that could veer him off course.

“You realize in the moment that the easy thing to do would be to run and maybe go somewhere else,” he said. “But you knew this could shake out a million different ways, so I stayed put and put my head down and worked and trusted in myself and the process and had confidence in that.”

Kyle McCord gets athleticism from dad, work ethic from mom

McCord gets his athletic gifts from his dad. Derek McCord was a star three-sport athlete in high school who got a scholarship to play quarterback at Rutgers.

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But while Derek had plenty of ability, he said he didn’t have anyone to instill in him the work ethic needed to become great. Derek’s parents divorced when he was 10. His father was mostly absent from his life growing up.

At Rutgers, his original coach was fired and the new coach, Doug Graber, didn’t take the time to learn about his background and mold him.

After a promising debut – he threw three touchdown passes in seven minutes as a backup against Pittsburgh in 1990 – his career foundered.

“I didn't do anything bad like get in trouble, but (Graber) felt like I goofed around a little bit and wasn't taking it seriously (enough),” Derek said.

In hindsight, he agreed. When Derek became a father, he vowed to give his kids the attention and guidance he hadn’t gotten. He and Stacy have three kids – Cole, Kyle and Courtney – and Derek coached his sons hard as they grew up in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

“(He was) pretty tough,” Kyle said. “At a young age, you don’t always understand why he’s getting on me about the smallest things. You think they don’t matter. Then once you get to high school and definitely college, you realize why he was so hard on you. He always told me, ‘There’s not going to be a coach that’s harder on you than I am.’ I think that’s still true to this day.”

Derek was hard on Kyle because he saw early how gifted he was athletically. In third grade, when some youth league teams have trouble executing simple run plays, Kyle could throw 25-yard darts. He could dunk a basketball by the time he was in middle school.

Kyle got his work ethic from his mom. Stacy is a teacher who instructs students in the gifted program.

“My wife is an extremely hard worker and pays so much attention to detail,” Derek said. “That's really what Kyle's all been about. He doesn’t leave any stone unturned and really does the job to the fullest and makes sure he's fully prepared. I have to give Stacy a lot of credit for that because I think that's where he gets it from.”

The path to Ohio State

McCord attended public school through eighth grade before enrolling at St. Joseph’s Prep in nearby Philadelphia. Derek McCord had coached at St. Joe’s for a couple of years before Kyle was born in 2002, and the Hawks had become a power.

McCord had already gotten about 20 scholarship offers from top college programs before he became a starter as a sophomore. Ohio State was not among them. McCord grew up as more of a Rutgers and Penn State fan.

Under Urban Meyer, Ohio State preferred dual-threat quarterbacks. Though McCord is a capable runner, he’s more of a pocket passer and didn’t think the Buckeyes’ offense suited him.

That changed his sophomore season. He attended the Ohio State-Penn State game in State College as a Nittany Lions recruit. But he was enamored by Dwayne Haskins Jr.'s passing in OSU’s 27-26 victory. When Ryan Day was named as Meyer’s successor, one of his first moves was to offer McCord a scholarship.

McCord sat behind C.J. Stroud for two years and then had the battle with Brown for the starting job. Day said McCord prevailed because of his consistency late in training camp. Against Indiana in the opener, McCord was solid but unspectacular.

“I think we both felt the same way,” Day said of McCord’s performance. “There were some good moments, good throws, and some other things that you wish you had back.”

What McCord wasn’t in the opener was nervous. Eager, yes. But not anxious.

OSU wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. can vouch for that. Harrison was McCord’s high school teammate at St. Joe’s. They are close friends.

“He never gets nervous,” Harrison said. “He's a calm, cool, collected kind of guy. It never gets too big (for him). He never lets the moment affect him.

“I wish I could take that from him because before games I'm super nervous. But he just has that confidence in himself, and he puts the work in.”

McCord said his preparation is the key to his steely nerves. If you’ve done all you can to prepare, why be nervous? For McCord, that’s an everyday process. Before training camp started in August, the McCord family had a vacation in Florida.

It was a working vacation for McCord. He worked out at a local gym every day and threw footballs on the beach with Cole.

“He never takes a break because he has a goal he wants to meet and exceed,” Stacy McCord said.

Brown is perceived to be the better athlete, but McCord is a good one. McCord has done agility training and hot yoga to improve his athleticism.

“We joke about this all the time,” Harrison said. “He says he can run a 4.6 40. I don't believe that. But he has definitely grown athletically with (strength) coach Mick (Marotti) in the weight room, just kind of getting faster. In practice, he’s eluding sacks against the D-line we have.”

'What can I do for the team?'

McCord embraces the pressure-cooker that being the quarterback at Ohio State is. He’s unlikely to succumb to the off-field temptations that can befall high-profile athletes. His grade point average as a communications major approaches 3.6. He doesn’t drink alcohol.

McCord is not going to let fame go to his head. In Florida, a fan recognized McCord leaving a restaurant. McCord’s grandmother was with him and was surprised that someone knew who Kyle was.

“Kyle’s grandmother said, ‘Kyle, I can’t believe that somebody down here in Florida recognized you. Does that happen a lot?’ ” Stacy said. “And he said, ‘Mimi, they recognized you, and they figured that it must be me because they recognized my grandmother.’ He’s just super quick-witted.”

McCord hasn’t secured the OSU quarterback job long-term just yet. Day wants to see him continue to develop, and Brown has earned the chance for playing time as well.

But McCord has already earned the respect of his teammates.

“He's always so calm and relaxed,” running back TreVeyon Henderson said. “When things are going good or when things are going bad, he just does a good job of just picking us up as an offense and leading us.”

Harrison’s bond with McCord goes well beyond their on-field relationship.

“He's just a good friend, a good person, someone you count on, someone you can respect,” he said. “I'm definitely blessed to have Kyle as my friend as well as a teammate.”

Now the time has come, at long last, for McCord to seize the job for which he has worked. The expectation for a quarterback at Ohio State is to win championships, contend for the Heisman Trophy and become a first-round NFL draft pick.

McCord knows this, but he’s not getting ahead of himself.

“I want to do great things,” he said. “I want to win championships. Especially at a place like this, if you're the quarterback and you're winning championships, the rest will take care of itself.

“I'm just focused on, ‘What can I do for the team? How can I make this team better? How can we win together as a team?’ Having strong confidence in that, everything else will work itself out.”

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Kyle McCord eager to show he can be next great Buckeye quarterback