‘It was stressful’: Northeast seniors Naquil Betrand and Tyrese Whitaker sign with Texas A&M and Temple

Northeast High School senior Tyrese Whitaker didn’t flash many smiles inside the school’s auditorium during Wednesday morning’s national signing day ceremony.

That didn’t mean, however, that the 6-foot-2, 235-pound defensive end and linebacker wasn’t happy.

He simply had already shifted gears. That morning, his teammate, Naquil Betrand, signed with Texas A&M, while Whitaker will stay home at Temple.

“It feels great,” Whitaker said after the event, “but at the end of the day, I’m the type of person that when I get my next goal, I’ll have my excitement and then I’m on to the next step, and the next step is to get on the field and play college football. The step after that will be getting to the [NFL]. This is just an event for everybody to see that I made it, and now it’s time for the hard part: to play against the best of the best.”

That’s a level of focus and determination that doesn’t surprise his father, Dennis, who saw his son’s potential when he first started playing Pop Warner with the North Philly Blackhawks.

“I saw it from day one,” Dennis Whitaker said. “He had the skills, ability, and the drive. He’s a gym rat. He loves the sport. He loves watching film. He does everything he can to prepare and get ready, and he has the focus to do it.”

That focus included using some savvy along the way. Earlier this month, Whitaker tweeted that he had reopened his recruitment after having committed to Temple in June.

The move, he said, wasn’t about trying to go anywhere else. It was a protective measure.

“The transfer portal hit high school kids who were committed very hard,” Whitaker said, “especially with coaches wanting players who were already experienced in the college realm. So I opened it back up just in case anything happened at Temple. It wasn’t about trying to go anywhere else. It was just about protecting myself. At the end of the day, college football is a business. Everybody wants to help themselves survive. Everyone has their own family. So I opened up my recruitment for the protection of me and my family. Once I saw that everything was OK and cool, I was ready.”

More than 1,600 players entered the transfer portal since it opened Dec. 5, according to ESPN. Since transfers no longer have to sit out a year, the portal is essentially a pool of free agents.

College coaches, according to many high school coaches, would often rather take veterans from the portal than risk developing a freshman, especially because of the pressure to win right away.

Betrand, a 6-foot-6, 325-pound offensive lineman, also kept his options open, although he had committed to the Aggies in August.

Colorado and its new coach, Deion Sanders, made an offer to Betrand again last week. He had committed to the school in March before the coaching change. An offer also came last week from new Nebraska coach Matt Rhule.

“It was stressful,” Betrand said. “Just sitting down and thinking to myself, ‘Is this the best fit for me? Is this school really for me?’ And I decided it really was.”

» READ MORE: Northeast’s Naquil Betrand was ‘a late bloomer’

His mother, Naja, whom he says had a heart attack and died in her sleep when he was 11, knew her son’s goal was to play college football.

“I know my mom is proud of me,” Betrand said. “She finally got to see what I’ve dreamed about. All this hard work was building up to make her proud, and I hope I did that.”

Dennis Whitaker, who played basketball at Simon Gratz, where he graduated in 1986, helped his son with the recruiting process.

He played point guard at Ohio University, where he once set a record for assists in a game with 16. He and his wife, Theresa Brooks-Whitaker, he said, are very happy that their son is staying close to home.

“That’s just the icing on the cake,” he said. “It was tough going through the recruiting process. It was very rigorous and stressful. I tried to help as much as I could, but the choice was going to be his because he would be the person at the school.”