As Western football goes through a ‘renewing,’ two transfers will lead the way
This high school football season is a full-circle moment of sorts for seniors Davi Belfort and Tovani Mizell.
The two played little league football in Broward County and spent a year together at West Palm Beach Cardinal Newman in 2021 before going their separate ways — quarterback Belfort transferring to Miami Gulliver Prep, running back Mizell moving to Maryland and playing for national powerhouse DeMatha Catholic.
Now, as seniors, they’re reunited again, set to play their final high school season at Davie Western.
“We’ve been playing together all our years,” Belfort said. “We’re like brothers. We’ve been playing together for pretty much our whole life. It feels kind of surreal that we’re back together for our senior year. It feels like kind of stuff out of a movie.”
The perfect ending to that script: The duo leading Western to its first-ever state championship. The Wildcats, despite fielding talented teams as of late, have yet to advance beyond the regional finals under coach Adam Ratkevich. Western will face a challenging road in Class 4M, with defending state champion Columbus part of the Wildcats’ region.
Could an infusion of new upperclassman talent be the difference?
“We all have one goal, and that’s to win a state championship,” Mizell said. “We’re looking forward to that goal. We’re looking real good as a team. ... They’ve gotten close. This is something that we can start and make history by winning a state championship.”
This could have been a rebuilding year for Western. The Wildcats, after all, are replacing the face of their team over the past four years in quarterback Collin Hurst, who was one of the most prolific quarterbacks in Broward County history and is now playing at FCS Presbyterian.
“First of all, as a coach, when you lose a guy like Collin, who really he was around me for basically four and a half years — he got around me at 14 — that’s like losing part of your family,” said Ratkevich, entering his 10th season as Western’s head coach. “Having said that, one of the things that’s exciting about football is the refreshing, renewing. We have a great group of young men.”
That group is led by Belfort and Mizell, a pair of three-star prospects committed to Virginia Tech and Kentucky, respectively.
Belfort, the son of retired Brazilian mixed martial artist Vitor Belfort, has thrown for a combined 3,772 yards and 33 touchdowns while also rushing for 587 yards and eight more scores in two years of high school — 2021 at Cardinal Newman, 2022 at Gulliver Prep. Originally part of the Class of 2025, Belfort reclassified to graduate a year early.
Ratkevich said Belfort has a chance to be “one of the top passers in the state of Florida this year.”
“Davi does have elite speed,” Ratkevich said. “He’s got a big enough arm to make all the throws and he’s a very charismatic young man. He’s somebody that’s infectious, a guy that people want to follow.
“He’s a winner.”
Belfort is close with Hurst and said he picked his brain about what to expect at Western.
The main message Hurst gave him?
“In every play we run, someone’s going to be open,” Belfort said. “It’s just up to me to just make sure I’m going through my reads and finding the open man.”
Among Belfort’s receiver options this year are seniors Alonzo Carter and Decedric Stokes, junior Koby Howard (a four-star recruit and a transfer from Pensacola), and sophomores Hunter Ratkevich and Robert Ortega.
And then there’s Mizell, the 5-10, 210-pound running back who brings a blend of speed, size and power. Mizell has been clocked running a sub-4.40-second 40-yard dash and squats 500 pounds — “a monster in the backfield,” as Ratkevich describes him.
“You’ve got a guy in a high school backfield with NFL measurables,” Ratkevich said. “That’s just different. He’s going to be bigger than a lot of people’s defensive linemen and linebackers. That’s a hard matchup for people to deal with.”
Added Belfort: “His ability to kill you in the backfield and also kill you in the passing game. Not only is he an elite running back, but he’s an elite receiver as well. I feel like that’s what makes him elite — his ability to be dynamic.”
Ratkevich still anticipates the offense following its pass-first, fast-tempo spread approach that it has used the past few years although the Wildcats will make “some tweaks” to suit Belfort’s strengths.
But Mizell’s presence will play a factor on how defense’s handle Western’s offense.
“It just puts more pressure on you,” Ratkevich said. “How much more can you lighten up your box to defend our guys on the perimeter with a massive o-line and a running back who is probably bigger than your inside linebackers? And if you put too many guys in your box, how do you cover guys like the guys we have on our perimeter?”
Belfort and Mizell will look to figure that out on the field together. Even though they haven’t played on the same team in two years, the bond they built over the years has remained.
Now, they have one final chance to put everything together.
“As far as our friendship, even though he was in Maryland that one year, literally nothing ever changed,” Belfort said. “We’ve always stayed in touch. Once a week, we would talk to each other and stuff like that. It feels like it’s just such a really cool opportunity.”
Miami Herald sportswriter David Wilson contributed to this report.
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