John Reid: Nittany Lion with the heart of a Hawk
Before defensive back John Reid even enrolled at Penn State last summer, he quickly had impressed his coaches with his focus and commitment to football.
Before defensive back John Reid even enrolled at Penn State last summer, he quickly had impressed his coaches with his focus and commitment to football.
"You spend a handful of minutes with him, and this kid has got maturity beyond his years," then-defensive coordinator Bob Shoop said in September. "The first time, we just started talking football and every time he'd come up, he really embraced the process. We became very, very close."
That description of Reid by Shoop, who left the Nittany Lions after the season to take the same job at Tennessee, isn't the least bit surprising to Gabe Infante, who coached Reid at St. Joseph's Prep.
"When I talked about John, people thought I was embellishing," Infante said Monday. "I'm very happy that after two years now, people call me and they're like, 'I can't believe what a phenomenal kid this is.' I've been saying this forever. I'll coach 40 years and I'll never coach a young man like that."
Reid will start his sophomore year at Penn State next week. One might think he'd want to take advantage of campus life beyond the field, but his double focus is academics and football, and he's serious about both.
"If you want to accomplish something, if you want to be able to execute the goals that you set out for, I feel like you need to put the work in," he said at the recent Penn State media day. "If you put the work in, you've got to put the time in. The only way you can create that time is by staying focused and not wasting it on things that you don't necessarily need out there."
Infante saw that concentration firsthand with Reid. He said when Reid first came to the Prep, the two would work out together twice a week in the weight room, where the coach tested the player to his limits.
"Every session, I'm trying to make it more and more difficult," Infante said. "I'm trying to find his breaking point. I'm trying to see at what point he taps out, either physically or emotionally, but he never did. That's when I realized he's a very different kind of person. It's not his athletic ability that makes him special, it's his soul."
That kind of determination landed Reid a start in his very first game, at the Linc last season against Temple. He played mostly backup cornerback in his first season, tying for the team lead with two interceptions, forcing a fumble and recovering a fumble.
Reid said Infante "not only changed my game on the field, he changed my life, just the way I look at things."
"When people set out to accomplish goals, they focus specifically on the goal, like trying to win the game rather than focusing on winning their snap at that time, winning that one rep, winning that rep. That's going to bleed into all these plays, which eventually leads you to win the game. So I focus on the process of everything, not necessarily the end result."
Reid doesn't want to be all serious, saying that "everybody [on the team] knows I joke around".
"But a lot of times," he added, "I'm really trying to work on certain things. That kind of stays with me naturally. That's kind of the way I've been."
Reid has shown that. In high school, he, his father and his uncle built a computer from scratch. Infante saw the commitment there, which makes Reid's dedication toward football easy to understand.
"When it comes to anything he's passionate about . . . if it's building a computer or anything that young man puts his heart to, he is all business," Infante said. "I've never seen anybody who, when he makes up his mind that that's what he wants to do, is more committed, more determined, more focused than that guy."
Receiver commits
Wide receiver Mac Hippenhammer of Snider High School in Fort Wayne, Ind., announced on Twitter that he made an oral commitment to Penn State for the freshman class of 2017.
The 6-foot, 170-pound Hippenhammer, ranked at three stars by Rivals.com and Scout.com, was introduced to Penn State coaches at a satellite camp they ran at Bowling Green. He chose the Nittany Lions over Iowa, Michigan State, Duke, and Wake Forest.
Hippenhammer is the 15th player and second wide receiver to commit to Penn State for 2017.
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