Derek Devine
The past week: Devine won the WPIAL Class 3A Section 3 wrestling championship Saturday in the 285-pound division when he pinned Seneca Valley’s Kevin Meeder.
Check this out: Devine, a senior at North Allegheny, has a 26-6 record this season and will compete in the WPIAL championships Friday and Saturday. At 6 feet 6, 275 pounds, he also was a standout lineman in football and accepted a football scholarship to Virginia.
You have the football scholarship, so why wrestle
this year? The main reason is because this is my last year to make [the PIAA tournament], and it’s a big deal if you make it there and place. The other reason is that my line coach at Virginia [Garrett Tujague] wanted me to keep wrestling. He thought it would keep me in shape, and I wanted to stay in shape also.
Do you like football better, though? Yes. Why? Well, football is a lot more of a team sport. Plus, it’s more fun to put on the pads, go out, just hit people and play football. It’s hard to explain. But also in Division I colleges, wrestling is more like a job. It’s extremely hard and rigorous, and they don’t give you very much money. I mean, scholarship money [laugh]. Football also has a lot more perks. Isn’t Division I football
close to a job, too? Yes, it definitely is. It is very hard and it may almost match wrestling. But they compensate you more in football with more money for scholarships. What’s harder on your body, football or wrestling? They’re both hard in different ways. In football, you get beat up a lot more. There are a lot more bruises. Wrestling is very tough mentally, pushing you past limits you didn’t expect to go to. You become very tired. It tires you differently than football.
The black-white stuff last year in Charlottesville (Va.) ever make you think twice
about Virginia? That’s a good question. A lot of the recruits got asked that. Myself and the other recruits, I think it did not bother us as much because we had been to Charlottesville and saw it’s a very, very nice area and a nice little city. It’s beautiful down there. With all that went on there, a lot of people from outside Charlottesville came in and did their thing. It wasn’t as much the people of Charlottesville. I know the football team stuck together, the students and people from there stuck together.