WXXV Student-Athlete of the Week: Ziron “Dank” Brown

Here at News 25, we take great pride in all the athletic accomplishments our coast athletes produce day in and day out, but what makes us even more proud is getting to know them, knowing they have a good head on their shoulders and an incredibly bright future ahead of them in the years to come. That’s exactly why we’re featuring Bay High’s offensive lineman Ziron Brown as this week’s WXXV Student-Athlete of the Week.

Nicknames are typically a substitute from a proper name and oftentimes makes communication seem easier, but when Bay High’s Ziron Brown is called “Dank,” he instantly feels comfortable as well as a sense of familly.

“It feels good and it makes me feel comfortable that they know my nickname and everything about me,” Brown said. “I don’t have anything to hide and it feels great. Dank came from my mom. When I was younger, she just wanted to call me something and she just started calling me dank. That’s been the name she’s called me since I was a baby.”

Just like the nickname “Dank” has stuck around for all those years, so has his love for football. Brown has spent countless hours on the gridiron since he was seven years old, and he says his motivation for playing all these years is his mom.

“My mom raised me by herself. My dad wasn’t around that much, so it’s always been momma’s tough love,” Brown said. “I grew up playing football. My mom wanted me to get into a sport that was aggressive because she had to raise me and wanted me to learn how to be a boy and be a man and this was the first sport I ever played.”

One person that has had a front row seat to watching Brown florish as an athlete and man is Bay High head football coach Jeremy Turcotte. Turcotte says Brown is a perfect example of all that bay high represents.

 “Quite frankly, to me Ziron represents what we want to be about,” Turcotte said. “He has grown so much as a player, as a young man, his emotional and character development, his physical development, his academic development and he’s always been a great student, but he just continues to excel and excel and exceeds everyone’s expectations. His stats are that he blocks anybody we put in front of him for a long time and they usually end up on the ground. “.

Just last week, Brown was selected to participate in the 2023 Bernard Blackwell All-Star game, and he’s not only the first All-Star chosen from Bay High School, but the first football player chosen from the entire Bay-Waveland school district.

“It’s a huge accomplishment. Eversince I started playing football, I dreamed of being an all-star because I loved how the role played for football plays and stuff like that,” said Brown. “It’s been the goal all along and it’s always been on my list.”

He’s not just an All-Star on the field, but a remarkable student in the classroom as well. This past July, Brown committed to take his academic and athletic  career to Stanford University. He’s only the second person from Bay High to go to Stanford, the first being Tank Williams who the football field is currently named after. 

“Me committing to Stanford was a once in a lifetime opportunity to get one of the top educations in the country, play power five football, and have a network after college or after the NFL,” said Brown.

“We have some well rounded kids and it’s good that he’s going to have the opportunity to play football at one of the most prestigious academic universities in the world,” Turcotte said. “We’ve talked and talked about that, and I think that that’s the most appealing thing is what it can do for him for the rest of his life and it just speaks to his maturity and his decision making. He’s very business-like so you can see that he wants to take care of business and wants to do good for his family and represent his family well which he does and I think that means the world to him and in far I know it does.”

That business mindset will take him far as he has aspirations to open up gyms one day and continue to invest in his family.