{"id":324304,"date":"2025-10-22T16:52:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T16:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/324304\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T16:52:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T16:52:16","slug":"2026-tight-end-isaiah-pina-commits-to-virginia-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/324304\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Tight End Isaiah Pina Commits to Virginia Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virginia Tech<\/a><\/b> has added a unique athlete to its 2026 recruiting class<\/strong><\/a>. Groveland (Fla.) South Lake tight end Isaiah Pina<\/a><\/b> has committed to the Hokies, giving Tech its first tight end pledge since the 2023 class.<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-6, 225-pound dual-sport athlete officially visited Blacksburg for the Vanderbilt<\/a><\/b> game earlier this fall, a trip that followed an unexpected football rise few could have imagined a year ago.<\/p>\n

Pina didn’t start playing football until the spring of 2024, shifting from basketball to the gridiron after years of coaches urging him to try. He entered high school as a baseball player before focusing on hoops, drawing early basketball interest from Tulane. But after one 7-on-7 session, everything changed.<\/p>\n

“Football wasn’t my thing,” Pina told 247Sports’ Brian Dohn earlier this year<\/strong><\/a>. “I always liked watching it, but I was focusing on basketball. They came back to me and I said no, no, no until six months ago. I went out to a 7-on-7 game and I had 10 touchdowns in a 7-on-7.”<\/p>\n

The performance opened doors quickly. Virginia Tech, Southern Miss<\/a><\/b>, UNLV<\/a><\/b>, Jackson State<\/a><\/b>, Sacramento State<\/a><\/b>, and The Citadel<\/a><\/b> all offered before Pina had even played a high school game, while Florida State<\/a><\/b>, Syracuse<\/a><\/b>, New Mexico<\/a><\/b>, and Kent State<\/a><\/b> began tracking him through the summer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Pina becomes the first tight end addition under interim head coach Philip Montgomery<\/a><\/b>, and the ninth player currently in the 2026 class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Virginia Tech has added a unique athlete to its 2026 recruiting class. Groveland (Fla.) South Lake tight end…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":324305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-324304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115418860457441280","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}