Pike Road's Wallace headed to Penn State

Pike Road’s Trey Wallace signed a football grant-in-aid with Penn State. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

The early signing period came at a bad time for Trey Wallace and a lot of his all-star teammates.

Normally, there would be a signing ceremony in the school gym, but the Pike Road High standout was in Mobile practicing for that weekend’s North-South All-Star Game. 

“It was still fun,” Wallace said. “The way they did it, they did it like a draft day so I wasn’t really missing anything except for the people back home.”

In a year that was anything but normal, Wallahs signing ceremony fit the atmosphere. The Patriot receiver had entertained offers from Tulane, Tennessee, South Carolina, South Alabama, Maryland, Houston, Jackson State and Duke before settling on the Nittany Lions because of “the society, the environment, the program and the school. I also love the academics and everything they had to offer.”

Wallace was a three-star recruit who was the 25th rated prospect in the state of Alabama and third in the area behind Prattville linebacker Ian Jackson and Robert E. Lee defensive lineman Anquin Barnes, a pair of Alabama signed. More than that, he is the building block of what Penn State hopes is a College Football Playoff contender.

The Nittany Lions never hid the fact they needed to upgrade their team at the quarterback position and with more skill players, but 2020 might not have been the ideal time to come to that conclusion. The recruiting class of 2021, because of COVID-19, would receive no visits from college coaches and could not be invited to recruiting visits on football weekends in the fall.

“With COVID, they pushed the NCAA dead period back a couple of months so that stopped coaches from coming and talking to you, coming to your school and meeting you,”Wallace observed. “And it stopped you from taking visits, so it made everything harder, made you have to make your decision off of online environments.”

Wallace “visited” each of the school’s recruiting him through “virtual tours,” getting a taste of the Penn State environment not from a weekend in Happy Valley but from his computer at home.

“It was fun,” he said. “Of course, it’s not going to be the same as you going there, but you can see what it’s going to look like. I saw what I was looking for.

And Penn State coaches saw exactly what they were looking for -- a high school senior who had fallen through the cracks in recruiting. Wallace had been a basketball star at Autauga Academy and never played football until he transferred to Pike Road in 2019. As a receiver for the Patriots, he led the team to a 22-2 record in his two years on the team, helping Pike Road average 44.9 points per game over that span. 

This past season, he caught 27 passes for 696 yards and seven touchdowns as a senior, lined up in Wildcat after a mid season injury at quarterback and rushed for 115 yards and a touchdown on 13 carries and added three kick returns for 153 yards. He also had three interceptions in spot duty on defense, which accounted for another 166 yards. A 17-year-old senior, he is still maturing as an athlete but is the kind of explosive playmaker the Nittany Lions needed.

Unfortunately for the Nittany Lions, it’s hard to feel at home in a virtual tour and James Franklin was in the midst of his worst season ever, suffering losses to Indiana, Ohio State, Maryland, Nebraska and Iowa in an 0-5 start before closing the year with four wins. 

“Coming into this season, they had lost a couple of their key players that opted out to declare for the (NFL) draft,” Wallace said. “But they got everything together and started winning at the end of the season.

There were closer programs recruiting him, such as Tulane, Tennessee and Jackson State, but Wallace didn’t shy away from the opportunity presented by Penn State, even if it meant venturing halfway across the country from his home.

“I know whatever decision I make, my family and friends are going to be happy for me and they’re going to support my decision,” he said. 

After his signing ceremony, he went out and had two receptions for 36 yards as the starting receiver in the South’s 28-20 win over the North. Now, he’s busy with the Patriots’ basketball team, waiting for his chance to be that impact receiver Penn State wants this fall.   

“I’ve just got to go in and work and do what I’ve got to do,” he said.