Pitt Hosts Elite 4-Star Tight End Colton Heinrich

Thanks to the tireless work by Charlie Partridge over the years, the Pitt Panther football program has developed a strong relationship with the Cardinal Gibbons High School football program in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Year in and year out, that Florida powerhouse produces Power Five football talent.

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Most recently, Pitt has signed players such as 2023 3-star athlete Jesse Anderson along with running back Vincent Davis, to their program.

Pitt has their eye on another player in the Cardinal Gibbons program, the problem is so does every top program in the country. However, Pitt accomplished something very important, which was to get that player on campus for a visit.

On Friday, Pat Narduzzi and his coaches hosted one of the most recruited tight ends in the country, 4-star talent Colton Heinrich. Some of the top offers that Heinrich holds are from Pitt, Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Miami, Ole Miss, Stanford, Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech and West Virginia.

Heinrich (6’4″, 225-pounds) was in town to attend a Pitt practice and to personally talk with the coaching staff, along with trying to get to know more about the program and the university.

Last night, as he was leaving Pittsburgh and heading to Columbus, Ohio for a visit today with Ohio State, Pittsburgh Sports Now was able to talk with Heinrich to get his impressions of his first visit to Pitt.

“Pitt has a very good relationship with my high school, as we’ve had several players that have gone on to play at Pitt from my high school,” said Heinrich. “So, I went into this knowing a little bit about Pitt and what they’re about. Making this visit, really put some things into perspective for me about Pitt. I’m glad that I had the chance to meet some of the coaches in person and was able to put the face to the name. It was able to see their practice fields, their facilities, their new hotel hot tub, plans for their new weight room and everything. So, it was good to see everything, and it was a productive trip.”

“I was able to talk with Coach Narduzzi for over an hour and had a great conversation. He actually pushed back a staff meeting in order to keep talking with me and my family. That was really cool to see. Our conversation was about what Pitt is really like and about. He talked a lot about the culture that exists at Pitt and about the total support that the program gets. I also talked with Coach Salem and watched some film with him and walked me through some things on film.”

This visit was just one of many that Heinrich has been taking, as over the last month, he’s been to Texas A&M, Auburn, Georgia, Miami, Ole Miss and Alabama. This highly coveted player realizes that it’s time to start getting serious about visits and is treating these as business trips.

“My parents and I are looking for three main things at every school that I go to,” said Heinrich. “The first thing is academics because there’s always life after football. The second thing is I want a football program that has die-hard fans in the community. I want a fan base that supports the football program, show up for games and a college town feel but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a college town. The final thing is I want to be a part of a team that has a winning tradition because I’ve been winning at Gibbons my entire life and I want to continue that down the road.”

With the long list of offers that he holds and the many great opportunities in front of him, Heinrich realizes that only selecting five official visits will be difficult. These visits that he’s made will be important as well as the upcoming ones as Heinrich starts the process of cutting down his long list of offers. Before he left town, the Panther coaches made it known to him that they’d love to have him make a return visit this summer.

“Yes, they did. They weren’t pushing me for it but they definitely let me know that they want to get me back, but they weren’t trying to force me into anything. Right now on all these visits. I’m trying to narrow down my list to probably 10 schools by the start of the summer. Then of those 10 schools, I’d pick five official visits.”