Deshaun Wethington enters his senior football season as King’s Fork High School’s career rushing leader with more than 4,000 yards, so he understandably commands interest from a variety of college programs.

In terms of offers on the table, “I’m up to five right now,” he said, listing Coastal Carolina University, Old Dominion University, Norfolk State University, Delaware State University and Liberty University.

He knows that list could be longer, though, and he sees the possibility of adding colleges to it given his recent improvement in the classroom.

“I re-took two courses during the summer to boost my (grade point average), so that’s going to be a great help, so now more of the offers that I missed out on, they’ll come back to me,” he said. “So I’m going to just play it out, see what I can get. But by the end of the season, I’m going to be committed.”

Bulldogs coach Joe Jones was pleased that Wethington got A’s in both of those summer courses.

“That’s going to help his core GPA a lot,” Jones said. “He can do it in the classroom.”

That is what Wake Forest University wanted evidence of, and Wethington will need to continue proving himself academically during his senior year.

In addition to Wake Forest, he has interest from Virginia Tech, the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University.

On the football side of things, Wethington has little left to prove to recruiters.

“Coach Jones, he’ll tell you, most of the college coaches, they’ll come in, and they actually say I’m bigger than what they expected,” he said. “They like my size, and most of the college coaches I talk to, they love my film … It’s just I got to get everything together.”

Jones said coaches wanted to see Wethington in person.

“Some coaches came in, thought he was 5-9, 5-10, they see he’s 5-11,” the coach said. “They like the fact that he’s 205 (pounds) now.”

Rather than compete in summer league basketball, he has fully dedicated himself to the football training program this past offseason and added more muscle as a result.

“When you see him in the weight room, he has perfect form in the bench, in the squat and the power clean,” Jones said. “When colleges get him, they’re not going to have to spend a lot of time on his technique in the weight room because he’s got it down.”

Wethington has good speed, but Jones has made it clear to recruiters that judging him simply by his 40-meter dash time does not do him justice.

“I tell them all, I said, ‘He’s not going to wow you in a combine running the 40,’” Jones said. “I said, ‘His best stuff is on the field. He can make people miss and he gets to full speed in about two steps, and that’s what separates him from a lot of other backs.’”

He has excellent field vision, and “once he makes his cut, he goes and that makes up for maybe going against a guy that’s a tenth of a second faster,” Jones said. “He can get to full speed quicker.”