MORGANTOWN — Taijh Alston had to dig deep when he went down with a torn Achilles tendon last summer before the season even started.
While it wasn’t considered season-ending, he was going to miss a significant portion of the 2020 season rehabbing — something he knew very well.
In the second game of the 2019 season at Missouri, Alston tore his ACL and was done for the year. He tore the same ACL when he was at East Carolina in 2017.
The only healthy season of college football Alston had was in 2018 at Copiah-Lincoln Community College, a junior college in southwest Mississippi.
Alston did return for one game last season, the regular-season finale at Iowa State, but to add insult to injury, missed the bowl game because he tested positive for COVID-19.
Giving up “did come to my head, but I just did have to dig deep and just know that this is what I wanted to do. I love the game of football and I wasn’t going to led an injury determine my career.”
In Neal Brown’s first year in 2019, then-defensive line coach, now-defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley knew about Alston, a 6-foot-4, 245-pound defensive end, from his time at Copiah-Lincoln. The Mountaineers were depleted up front heading into the year, so Alston’s role seemed extensive.
After a sack in the opener at JMU, he was done after a painful knee injury at Mizzou.
“I just heard a snap but I didn’t think it was that bad because my adrenaline was still rushing,” Alston said. “When I looked down, I knew it wasn’t right and I knew I had torn something in my knee.”
After rehabbing the rest of the year, Alston was ready to go in fall camp in 2020, getting up to speed when a non-contact pop slammed the brakes on everything again.
“I was doing a bag drill and while I was back-pedaling and planted on my Achilles,” he said. “It felt like someone kicked me in the back of the knee.
“That was another setback and I just had to grind every single day and not give up, have that fight mentality.”
In two years at WVU, Alston had played in just two complete games, with the vast majority of his time in Morgantown rehabbing. Finally, during spring practice, he was able to get on the field and play freely, trying not to think about the possibility of getting hurt again.
Alston was in the mix at defensive end by the end of the spring, but projected starter Jeffery Pooler Jr. entered the transfer portal, opening the door wide-open for Alston … if he could stay healthy.
He made it through spring and fall, enjoying every step of the way. While practices can be a grind for some, just getting a chance to be on the field was something Alston didn’t want to take for granted.
“Before my injuries, I would just go through practice, but now I actually enjoy it because I know it can all be taken,” he said. “I know to have fun and make the most out of practice, and be thankful that I’m even here playing the game today.”
Something at practice seemed to have worked through it all, as well. As one of the lesser-known defensive lineman behind Akheem Mesidor and Dante Stills, Alston is having an impressive start to the 2021 season.
In his longest stretch playing in three years, Alston has 19 tackles — seven for loss — in five games. He also has four sacks to his name.
Despite being a fifth-year college football player, Alston thinks he hasn’t even scratched the surface of what he can be.
“I think I got a lot of football left in me, now that I know how to take care of my body, stay on rehab, stay doing the things that I need to do,” he said. “I feel like I’ll be in a good position to keep playing this game.”
Alston and the Mountaineers (2-3, 0-2 Big 12) will face Baylor (4-1, 2-1) on the road at noon Saturday.
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