Stevens Sees Commitment

While names like Chris Pantale and Hubie Graham at tight end would certainly be extremely exciting to see making a commitment to Connecticut this season, players like David Stevens could be flying a bit under the radar. Stevens made the trip for an unofficial visit to Storrs in February and liked what he saw.

Army, Akron, New Hampshire and Purdue have already pulled the trigger and offered Millburn, N.J., native David Stevens a scholarship, however programs such as Boston College, Cincinnati, Syracuse, Rutgers, Virginia, Connecticut, Temple and Pittsburgh are also recruiting the 6-foot-4, 230-pound Millburn High School standout. Earlier this year Stevens made the trip to Connecticut with family to see what the school had to offer and came away impressed.

“I have been talking to Coach (Scott) Lakatos for a long time now and he comes off as a really cool guy,” Stevens said. “We exchange emails pretty often and he tells me about the program while I tell him about myself and have been able to learn quite a bit about one another that way at this point.”

“When I visited Connecticut it was just an unofficial visit back in February, so there wasn’t much going on in terms of football then,” Stevens explained. “Most of the campus is brand new which was really nice and I liked what the school had to offer in terms of campus, academics and atmosphere. While I was on campus the people I met were very accommodating and I enjoyed my time there.”

While Stevens liked the coaching staff he had met and thought the campus was very impressive we got the impression he may not have been expecting what he saw when he toured the football facilities at Storrs. The New Jersey product gave rave reviews to the football facilities and saw an obvious commitment to excellence there.

“The football facilities were all brand new and they just put a ton of money into them, so you can tell that they take their football program very seriously there,” Stevens stated. “I liked that everything was in one station for you to do as opposed to having to go all over the weight room for your workout. There were about thirty of those stations lined up in the room and then they had it so your workout was programmed by some sort of card or chip. Upstairs they had a cafeteria just for the football team, so you know they eat well there and the indoor field was just huge. Everything was really impressive there and even though I didn’t get to go see the stadium it was just very nice at Connecticut.”

As a junior, Stevens caught 28 passes for 455 yards and five touchdowns from his tight end position. He also added 33 tackles and four sacks at defensive end. For his efforts, he was named first-team All-County, All-Conference and All-Area.

Stevens reports a max bench press of 280 pounds, a max squat of 450, a max hang clean of 245 and a max dead lift of 505 pounds.

Stevens carries a 3.0 core GPA and took both the SAT and ACT tests in June of 2007.