Princeton – It’s official – D5 is going DI.
Princeton all-state receiver Dominick Collins signed his National Letter of Intent to play college football at West Virginia University on Wednesday at Princeton High School.
After a season in which he helped lead Princeton to the Class AAA state championship and shattered program records on offense, the all-state captain has found a new home.
The process unfolded quickly but proved rewarding for the speedy standout who was seeking a Division I offer and finally received one Sunday evening. Wednesday afternoon ahead of signing his LOI, he took to social media to confirm his decision.
“It was a long process,” Collins said. “You start to lose hope through it but you always just got to stick to God’s plan because everything he has will always help you in life and he’s never wrong. And I stuck through it, trusted everyone and trusted myself. I got a text from (WVU head coach) Neal Brown. He said, ‘Hey, we’d like you to come up, watch practice and talk after.’ So I go up there we just talk after and he talks about how he loves my game, loves what I’m about and that he really thinks that I could be a key factor for West Virginia. It’s kind of hard to turn that down.”
WVU was a destination Collins hoped to find himself at all along. He sported yellow gloves with the WVU logo throughout the season and caught a 51-yard touchdown pass right in front of Brown who was in attendance for the Class AAA title game.
“There were two schools I wanted to go to,” Collins said. “They were one of those two schools. I wore those gloves because that blue and gold is different.”
Collins finished the season with 83 catches for 1,901 yards and 27 touchdowns. The 27 receiving scores tied the statewide single-season record while every other statistic broke program records he established last season. He’ll reunite in Morgantown with quarterback Grant Cochran who accepted a preferred walk-on offer last year. The two connected for 87 times for 1,511 and 27 touchdowns during the two seasons they played together.
That explosive playmaking ability is part of what got Collins recruited. He ran the fastest time ever record at a WVU team camp this past summer, clocking a 4.25 40-yard dash.
Yet he’s already identified areas of his game where he want to improve.
“The coaches told me one thing that I have to improve on just getting a little more weight on me and my route running. They said it’s not bad., it’s just being able to cut on a dime really because with my speed and where I naturally run full speed if I can cut on a dime nobody’s gonna know what to do and I’m going to be open and probably 95% of the time.”
Collins plans to study exercise physiology and will do so on a scholarship despite the late offer.
“It feels really good to be able to enter on a full scholarship because that’s what you dream of as a kid,” Collins said. “I just want to go to college for free and that is what I’m doing. Just as I say in every interview, just the hard work that I’ve put in really shows and it really does pay off.”
