Students and faculty at Charles Henderson arrived to school Thursday morning to the surprise of a certain notable college football coach walking the hallways.

Auburn head football coach Gus Malzahn made a last-minute stop at the high school Thursday to visit with Trojan linebacker and Auburn commit Richard McBryde.

Malzahn is on a tour of sorts through the state this week. After his stop in Troy, he headed to Montgomery to visit St. James High School tight end and Auburn commit Jalen Harris before speaking at the Alabama Football Coaches Association’s 2015 convention.

These kinds of trips are common for Malzahn, who often visits student-athletes and their parents constantly throughout the recruiting process.

“(Auburn) Coach Scott Fountain, who has been recruiting Richard, let him know they were going to drop by,” Charles Henderson head football coach Brad McCoy said. “He stopped in to visit Richard for about 20 minutes. He told me they’d be there at 8:30 a.m. and I said, ‘OK sounds good.’”

McCoy said Malzahn and McBryde talk often, sometimes twice a week, and McBryde said he reaches out to Malzahn every once in a while just to catch up.

“We probably talk like twice a week,” McBryde said. “ Sometimes I call him just to see what he is up to and to talk about school and stuff like that.”

Although Malzahn’s visit was brief, it didn’t stop students and faculty from trying to snap a few pictures with the head coach.

“Some of the secretarial staff, when they saw that he was there, they spoke to him and took a picture with him,” McCoy said.

McBryde, a 6-foot-2, 210-pound senior and four-star prospect according to 247 Sports, was an early target by Auburn.

The senior received an offer from the Tigers in February of 2014, and has remained a solid verbal commit since.

McBryde became the first player in Charles Henderson history to be invited to compete in the Under Armour All-America game and was named the 4A lineman of the year in 2014.