MORGANTOWN — One of the hardest gut punches a high school athlete can take is hearing his or her senior season is over after a significant injury.
University High’s Joey McBee awkwardly planted his foot on a punt fake in the third game of an already-shortened football season last fall against Wheeling Park, and that was the last time he’d see the field for the Hawks.
“It puts a split down my heart,” head coach John Kelley said after the game of his two-year captain. “I don’t know what to say. It’s devastating.”
McBee ended up tearing his ACL and meniscus, and while his high school football career was prematurely over, it was also a blow to his collegiate future. He was getting looks from several smaller colleges, but he wasn’t able to put senior film out on the recruiting trail.
“After I tore my knee up, I was struggling to find places to go play,” McBee said. “I had one D-III offer, but I wanted to try and get my name out there a little more.”
Enter Cincinnati assistant Ron Crook, who coached under Dana Holgorsen at WVU from 2014-16. Crook’s targeted recruiting area with the Bearcats is West Virginia, and McBee visited campus while going out to see a friend.
From there, a relationship blossomed to the point McBee signed his Letter of Intent on Monday morning to be a preferred walk-on at Cincinnati.
“One day out of the blue, [Crook] said he was going to talk to “(Cincinnati head coach Luke) Fickell about getting me a preferred walk-on spot, and it went through,” McBee said.
McBee was a jack-of-all-trades when healthy at UHS, playing all over the field on offense, defense and special teams. When the team needed a quarterback before his junior season in 2019, McBee stepped up and gave it a try, before eventually moving to tight end and slot receiver when Chase Edwards emerged.
Last year before his injury, he continued to play tight end and added linebacker and punter to his resume. With the Bearcats, it hasn’t been decided which side of the ball he’ll play, but McBee will play tight end or linebacker.
Cincinnati is coming off a 9-1 campaign in 2020, going unbeaten in the regular season before coming up just short, 24-21, in the Peach Bowl against Georgia.
“I’m excited to be a part of a top-10 [team] coming off an awesome season last year and almost beating Georgia,” McBee said. “It’s a scary but enlightening time to be able to go out to such a competitive school, both academically and athletically.”
Nerves are still bundled up for McBee — recovering from a significant knee injury while also preparing for a Division I camp is daunting, but his recovery is going well.
“The rehab process was definitely a pain,” he said. “Not being able to even begin walking without any support for three or four months was a long process. I think I’m starting to make some quicker comebacks now that I’ve started running and lifting again, now that I’m nine months-to-a-year out.”
TWEET @SeanManning_1
