AT COLORADO: This Season (Fr.)?Projected as a tight end his true freshman year in college.
HIGH SCHOOL?As a senior, he earned All-Southeast Region honors from PrepStar and All-Dixie Region honors from SuperPrep, which ranked him as the seventh overall player out of Kentucky and the top tight end. Scout.com ranked him as the nation’s No. 46 tight end overall, with Rivals.com rating him as the No. 10 player in the state. He was named to the prestigious Kentucky Football Coaches Association’s “Tremendous 26,” and earned first-team All-State honors from both the Louisville Courier-Journal and BluegrassPreps.com (second-team by the Associated Press). The Lexington Herald-Leader named him to its Class of the Commonwealth team, honoring the top 22 players in the state. He was a first-team All-Sky Conference performer as both a junior and senior, and was the recipient of the Kentucky High School Athletic Association’s Championship Sportsmanship Award for 2006. A three-year letterman in football, he earned his school’s Big Play Award as a senior, when he caught 48 passes for 669 yards and seven touchdowns, averaging a healthy 13.9 yards per catch. He also played some defensive end, racking up 28 tackles (16 solo), with six for losses including three quarterback sacks; he also recovered a pair of fumbles. As a junior, he had 22 catches for 317 yards and three touchdowns (14.4 per catch), with nine tackles and a fumble recovery on defense, and as a sophomore, he caught two passes for 30 yards in limited action. For his career, he had 72 catches for 1,016 yards and 10 touchdowns, averaging 14.1 yards per catch, setting school records for career receptions, yards and touchdowns by a tight end. On special teams, he also handled the long snapper duties. His top game career games?all in his senior year?included a 25-22 win over John Hardin in the regional final playoffs, as he had seven catches for 80 yards on offense and four tackles, a sack and a fumble recovery on defense. In that game, he had clutch grab for a first down on a 4th-and-9 play that led to the winning touchdown, and he recorded a sack on fourth down to end the game. Against Franklin Simpson, he had six catches for 100 yards in a 68-10 win; in a 38-29 loss to nationally-ranked Louisville Trinity, he had four catches for 70 yards and a touchdown. In the Kentucky East-West All-Star game in June following his senior year, he caught three passes for 46 yards, including a 16-yard TD reception, in the West’s 41-10 win. Under coach Kevin Wallace (his father), Bowling Green went 13-2 his sophomore through senior seasons, coming up just short each time in the state championship game. He also lettered three times in track in high school (throws), setting the state mark in the javelin as a senior (157-9) with personal bests of 45-11? in the shot put and 127-5 in the discus. As a senior, he was the Sky Conference champ in the javelin with that record throw, and was second in the discus and shot; in the latter he was fifth as a junior and sixth as a senior.
ACADEMICS?He plans to major in Business at Colorado. In high school, he was a member of the National Honors Society and the Beta Club while he has maintained a 3.7 grade point average. He was a two-time KHSAA Academic All-State team member.
PERSONAL?He was born March 5, 1990 in Bowling Green, Ky. Hobbies include riding four-wheelers, video games, fishing and watching college sports and NASCAR. Father (Kevin) was his high school football coach; his mother (the former Dana Cunningham) was a forward on the Western Kentucky women’s basketball team in the mid-1980s which advanced to two Final Fours. He has aspirations of becoming a college football coach after his playing career is over.
