Tyrese Whitaker Stays Loyal to the Hometown Team

Tagged under: District 12, News, Recruiting

Anthony Franklin | December 21, 2022

At 6-2 235lbs Tyrese Whitaker is very noticeable on the football field before the play begins. Opposing tackles and tight ends have their hands full with him as he goes 100% on every play. As a freshman and sophomore, he started at now closed Bishop McDevitt helping the Lancers reach the state semifinals as a sophomore which coincidentally would be their final school year as the school due to enrollment and funding issues decided to shut down. Tyrese and many other Lancers in need of a home migrated over to fellow CL member Archbishop Wood for their junior seasons. When HC Matt Walp stepped down to take an assistant coaching job at Rutgers University Tyrese and others decided to look for a new home their senior seasons and Tyrese ended up at Northeast High. A school with a long rich history of producing great football players including a few NFL players. Tyrese camped during the spring in between junior and senior seasons and one of those camps was the Temple University camp. He impressed the coaches from all universities that day and earned 4 offers. However, he states he wasn’t considering committing to a school at the time until Coach Drayton & Coach Smith had a meeting with him and were very assertive & direct about the kind of player they wanted & how much they wanted him. They both coached him hard during the camp and from there he knew they had a liking towards him. During the recruiting process after committing to Temple many schools tried to sway him and his decision but today Tyrese put any doubts and questions to rest by signing to be a Temple Owl for the next 3-5 years. He intends to major in business management. Unlike the previous HC and staff, Coach Drayton has made a strong emphasis on recruiting the 3 city leagues very hard to keep the local talent home. Tyrese had offers from Big 10 schools as well as prominent FCS schools & HBCU’s but stuck with the hometown school partially because “Well for one I never was a bandwagon type of athlete I feel like at of young guys in my field of work get too caught up on. The gear and the outside things instead of what really matters , I chose temple because the coaching staff changed temple around and put a strong emphasis on the standard they want on the team and they followed it before the new coaching staff the energy was down but when coach Drayton came everything changed for the better, the experience the whole coaching staff has ,plus the great ability to coach is something young guys that have interest from temple should consider” The Owls have another blue collar guy ready to put his head down and get to work helping bring the program back to the glory days where they were regularly in contention for the AAC championship and generally a top 5 FBS G5 proram.

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