Central Catholic’s AJ Beatty Names His Top 7 Schools

It would tough to name a local player, aside from Westinghouse’s Dayon Hayes, who’s recruiting stock and profile has risen more in the past year than Central Catholic defensive end A.J. Beatty.

The talented three-star recruit has accumulated 40-plus offers but Friday morning, he made the difficult decision of cutting that long list down to just seven schools.

Here’s the list of seven that Beatty is still considering: West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Central Florida, Purdue, NC State and Maryland.

Following his announcement, Pittsburgh Sports Now reached out to Beatty and asked if today was in some ways a relief in terms of being able to narrow his focus down to seven instead of forty.

“Over the last few months, it got a little bit stressful, so my family and I just talked about everything and narrowed it down,” said Beatty. “I’m looking forward to focusing on these seven schools and getting to know the coaches more.”

“When narrowing it down to my top schools, I put education first then facilities probably next Also, just where my family and I felt comfortable. My family and friends helped me out so it wasn’t too hard.”

So now that he’s gotten to this point, what’s next for Beatty and does he have a timeline for making the ultimate decision of deciding on a school?

“I’m taking an official visit to North Carolina on June 7 but besides that, I’m still working on my visits. I don’t know when I’m going to commit yet but probably in the summer if I had to guess.”

It came as somewhat of a surprise that despite being his first Power Five offer, Pitt didn’t make Beatty’s list of finalists. He respectfully didn’t want to talk about any of the schools that didn’t make his final seven.