For most football teams in South South Dakota and around the country, outside of the big Texas schools, having one guy commit to a power four team is impressive. For the Pierre Governors, it’s almost feeling like a habit.
When Cooper Terwilliger announced his verbal commitment to Penn State in April, it wasn’t the first time the Governors have seen an athlete commit to a power four team. It wasn’t even the second in the last five years. Terwilliger joined Lincoln Kienholz and Jason Maciejczak from the Class of 2023 where Kienholz signed to go to Ohio State and Maciejczak signed to go to Nebraska. It also comes on the heels of Grey Zabel signing to head to North Dakota State in the class of 2020 and is now in the NFL. Jett Zabel also signed to go North Dakota State in the class of 2024. For head coach, Steve Steele, he had to learn on the fly with some schools reaching out starting with Grey Zabel and then it really ramped up when Kienholz was being heavily recruited but when Zabel was being recruited, it was much different in the rules than when Kienholz was recruited and now how much it changed to see Terwilliger recruited…
But one of the big advantages Terwilliger has, are those former Governor players who have been recruited. Terwilliger plans to graduate in December of his senior year and he says he was able to talk to the former Governors and even players at Penn State to get some advice…
For Steele to now go through the process again he continues to learn more on recruitment…
Terwilliger is the first Governor in the Class of 2027 and joins a long list of Governor football players to commit to playing college football especially in this decade.
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