National Signing Day in Virginia

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - Signing day is always a special day for the top high school football players. It’s the day many make it official where they’ll be playing in college, signing their National Letters of Intent.

At Albemarle High School, Isaiah Grevious and Malakye Hicks signed their letters.

Grevious had 90 tackles this past season with five sacks. He’ll play at the Division One level with the Virginia Military Institute.

“I started playing football around seven years old. I remember riding in the car one day and my mom telling me, You could play this in college,’ and my grandpa saying, ‘Yeah, people get scholarships for sports.’ Ever since I heard that, that’s been my goal. To be able to accomplish that is something special,” Grevious said.

Defensive end Malakye Hicks had close to 30 sacks in the past two seasons for the Patriots. He’s signing with Frostburg State in Maryland.

“I remember when I was five and my mom said, ‘Do you want to play football?’ I said, ‘What’s football?’ She put me onto flag football and ever since I knew I wanted to play in college or NFL. I’m just happy that my family’s happy and I can put them in a better place,” Hicks said.

At Louisa County High School, six players from Coach Will Patrick’s team signed letters of intent.

Quenton Spellman signed with Gardner Webb, Caden Lundy is headed to Averrett, Takai Comfort and Jack Clements will both play at Shenandoah University, and Austin Talley and Jherkeem Banks will join teammate and quarterback Landon Wilson at Emory & Henry.

At UVA, Coach Tony Elliot signed 10 players during the early signing period, but today didn’t add any others.

“We fought hard down the stretch trying to sign some more high school guys to fill a couple needs, but wasn’t able to close on those,” Elliot said.

Elliot did address a few losses, those being the loss of Associate Head Coach Marques Hagans to Penn State and the transfer of Brennan Armstrong to NC State.

“For [Hagans] it was about an opportunity to grow outside this environment, to be able to accept a new challenge. I definitely didn’t want to see him go,” Elliot said. “[Armstrong] earned that opportunity to make that decision. As much as you would not like to see it, you can’t be upset about it. I don’t take it personal.”

Coach Elliot says there will probably be some emotions on both sides when Virginia plays against Armstrong and NC state in its ACC opener in September.

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