Body transformation lifts Aeneas Hawkins as Penn State debut season nears

Coming from a football family, freshman defensive tackle Aeneas Hawkins thought he understood what it would take to play at the college level.

Arriving at Penn State last summer with plenty of confidence leading into the start of preseason practice, Hawkins’ understanding hadn’t truly been tested.

Then he met Connor McGovern.

“I remember my very first practice during training camp in pads, Connor McGovern punched me harder in my chest than I've ever been punched by anybody in my life,” said Hawkins. “That was when I realized, OK, this is going to take some time.”

Fortunately for Hawkins, he has plenty of the precious commodity left in his college football career and, more important, he’s already taken advantage of the time he’s had in the program. Specifically concentrating on reshaping his body, the redshirt freshman defensive tackle went into the weight room determined to do exactly that.

Landing with the Nittany Lions at 6-foot-2, 305 pounds, admittedly overweight, Hawkins reduced his body weight down to 250 pounds under the direction of strength coach Dwight Galt and his staff. In the time since that low weight point, Hawkins has added 30 pounds of good weight, up to a reported 280 pounds this summer.

Crediting Galt and his staff for the direction and confidence in his development, Hawkins doesn’t hesitate to acknowledge the tremendous amount of work that has already gone into his college career.

“It's been a battle. A lot of development that's taken place. I came in, not at the right body weight, not really ready for college football all the way yet,” said Hawkins. “The strength staff believed in me, the coaching staff believed in me, and they gave me time to develop.”

Choosing not to identify a specific end game for his physical development, acknowledging that typical Big Ten defensive tackles check in between 285 and 300 pounds, Hawkins said he’s simply going to continue working with the same mindset that has brought him this far.

Certainly, it has caught the attention of position coach Sean Spencer, who identified Hawkins this spring as having taken a big step in his development this offseason.

“Another guy I'd throw in is Aeneas Hawkins,” said Spencer, including Hawkins with fellow defensive tackles Judge Culpepper and Damion Barber. “These guys have really just gone from A to B to C pretty quickly here in the spring. And that's what you want to get out of spring practice. You want to get the older guys not to plateau and to keep going, and you want the younger guys to be viable in your rotation. And I think those guys have done that.”

Even so, Hawkins isn’t yet ready to overstate his expectations for the upcoming season.

Wanting to focus on continuing to get better, Hawkins said that he’s going to be ready to contribute if and when he’s called to do so, in any avenue asked of him. In the meantime, though, he’s going to keep pushing himself forward in the weight room, in meetings, and out on the practice field.

“I think a lot of people think college football is something that it isn’t, myself included, and I come from a football family. So sometimes you think you're going to come in ready to go, then you get punched in your mouth and you can't remember your playbook. That was the case for me. I needed to learn, I needed to develop. I don't look at it as a negative or a step back. I think it's just part of the process.

“We developed. I'm happy about it. I'm not perfect yet. I think a lot of these guys would say the same thing. I'm just going to keep trying to get to be the best person I can be.”