Culture, energy drew Union’s Aaron Gunn to Louisville
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Thursday, March 19, 2020 | 1:26 PM
Union’s Aaron Gunn - Trib HSSN preseason Kennywood Top 25 football team
One of Pennsylvania’s top offensive linemen has decided where he’ll play college football.
After receiving football scholarship offers from Division I schools like Michigan State, West Virginia, Coastal Carolina, Cincinnati and Kentucky, Union junior lineman Aaron Gunn made a verbal commitment to Louisville on Tuesday via his Twitter account.
Shutting it all down blessed to be a cardinal #GoCards @Coach_Ledford @UofLFootball pic.twitter.com/j2qLX8hk0u
— Aaron gunn (@Aarongunn13) March 18, 2020
The Cardinals first came into play for Gunn on Oct. 6. Since then, the 6-foot-3, 308-pound lineman said they were at the front of the list. After making several trips to campus in Louisville, Gunn decided it was time to make it official.
“I’ve been down there a lot, and they showed a lot of interest in me and I appreciated that,” Gunn said. “Whenever I got down there you could tell what their culture was about. There’s a newfound energy that they had and they are just trying to win. I just wanted to be a part of that.”
Gunn, a three-star recruit by 247sports.com, started gaining interest from colleges as a sophomore. He had the size and intangibles college coaches look for.
He was offered by Slippery Rock and then started to see interest from larger schools. Kentucky offered in the summer of 2018 and then West Virginia offered this past summer before Michigan State and Western Michigan got into the mix. Gunn felt comfortable making a decision this week.
“It’s relieving, there’s a lot of pressure off me now,” Gunn said. “I don’t have to worry about impressing schools and keeping in contact with coaches. It’s just fun now. You dream of times like this as a kid. Now, I get to say I’m a future Louisville Cardinal.”
With a few FBS schools after him, Gunn narrowed down his decision to Louisville and West Virginia, but ultimately, the future Cardinal thought his final decision was an easy one.
“Once I made up my mind that I wanted to be a part of Louisville and considered the relationship that I had built with the coaches, it was pretty easy,” Gunn said.
Gunn will still have one more season to shore up his talents at Union, where the Scotties went 3-7 this past season. With Gunn’s size, he naturally attracted attention from college coaches.
But, heading into his senior year, Gunn still has certain parts of his game he wants to work on before heading off to college.
“I’m just trying to keep on improving my game as always,” Gunn said. “But I want to try to play at a quicker pace this season, the pace of college. I just want to keep improving on everything.”
But his work doesn’t stop on the field. As of Thursday, Gunn was the first Louisville commit of the 2021 class and he said he had already started to get to work
“As the first commit, I’m working on doing some recruiting myself,” Gunn said. “I’m trying to get some other dudes too, but I think we’re going to have a pretty good class from what I see.”
Greg Macafee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Greg by email at gmacafee@triblive.com or via Twitter .
Tags: Union
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