Up Close & Personal: Gordon aims to get an early start
Trent Gordon’s recruitment is a tale of first impressions – one that stuck, one that didn’t.
Gordon’s hometown, the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas, is about a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Baton Rouge, La. He grew up a fan of LSU, and some of his first mental images of college football come from Death Valley.
So when it was the Tigers who offered him his first scholarship, in December 2016 after an outstanding junior season at Manvel High, Gordon was quite literally at a loss for words. After hanging up the phone, it took him a few hours to share the news with anyone, as he needed time for the moment to set in. Then he started thinking.
If his first offer came from a Southeastern Conference power, surely many others would follow, and LSU would still be there when he was ready. Over the next two months, he stockpiled dozens of offers, becoming one of the hottest prospects in the Lone Star State. In the middle of that flurry came an offer from Penn State, a school that was located some 1,500 miles away and about which Gordon knew very little. He had followed many of the schools in his region, but in March he toured some of the places he hadn’t previously seen. It would ultimately alter the course of his recruitment.
Gordon made stops at Michigan, Ohio State, Tennessee and West Virginia, as well as PSU. While LSU’s initial offer and his childhood fandom had Gordon thinking purple and gold early on, his visit to University Park shook it all up.
“They introduced me to the entire coaching staff in the hopes of me coming back up again, or me not coming back up ever again, so they brought every single coach that they had in the facility,” Gordon said. “They brought all the coaches and then [greeted] me right in the middle of the foyer. After that, they showed me around the campus. ...
“We stopped and had conversations with [students]. The way they were talking to me about the campus and the coaches and the student life there, I was just like, Wow this is already a great school for me to go to. Everybody seems genuinely happy here. I want to surround myself with the people, atmosphere and the coaches.”
It was all he needed to see. A few weeks later, once he got home from his traveling, he committed to the Nittany Lions.
Gordon’s parents, Lavalius and Tanya, had encouraged him from the start to explore his options. Just because he was a fan of LSU growing up didn’t mean it would be a comfortable setting for his studies.
“LSU was a dream school, but it didn’t really have what I needed to go further in life like Penn State has, so that kind of capped that,” Gordon said. “Plus, my parents never really liked LSU like I did.”
When they visited Penn State, they found a common thread. It checked off the boxes for both parents and son, both academically and athletically. Gordon wanted to get there as fast he could to get a jump on playing time; his parents were ready for him to increase his academic workload.
After his junior year ended, Gordon made the decision to graduate early. He had to spend the summer in school and then take three college-level courses during the fall. He did it all while ranking among the top 10 percent of his senior class.
He plans to study biology at Penn State, at least initially, and grad school is part of the long-term plan. In a way, his work in the classroom comes naturally to him. Acclimating to that part of college life isn’t the worry. What he aims to accomplish by enrolling in January is to carve an inside track into the three-deep.
He’s penciled in as a cornerback and has the flexibility and size at 6-foot-1 and 180 pounds to slide over to safety, giving the coaches options in a secondary that loses all four starters. His high school coach, Kirk Martin, described Gordon to GoPSUSports.com as “extremely fast” and “very, very intelligent.”
By showing up in time for winter workouts and spring practice, Gordon is hoping to demonstrate those abilities in order to be relied upon immediately. What he’s really trying to do is make a strong first impression.
“I want to get off to a good start,” he said. “I don’t plan on going to Penn State trying to redshirt or sit on the bench my first year. That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to get on the field and play."