| Special for the USA Today Network
Editor’s Note: Lake Nona’s rising senior defensive lineman Zane Durant wrote the following first-person story to announce where he will play college football.
The 6-foot-2,260-pound Durant has started for Lake Nona since its first year. In 2020, he had 40 total tackles, 15.5 tackles for loss, 6.5 sacks, 13 quarterback hurries, two forced fumbles, and two fumble recoveries.
Durant is a four-star recruit, the No. 46 defensive lineman and the No. 42 overall player in Florida on the 247Sports Composite rankings. He has more than 20 offers and has limited his finalists to Indiana, Miami, Penn State, and UCF.
That has always been the dream.
I’ve dreamed of playing DI football since I was 6 years old and played for the Lake Nona Lions.
I started watching the NFL and I remember watching Adrian Peterson. I checked out his highlights from Oklahoma on YouTube and saw how passionate the fans were. That’s when my dream came to be of playing college football.
I also started out as a running back. I played running back and linebacker in the small league. It wasn’t until high school that I played defensive end. Since then I’ve played the entire defensive line. I love it.
If I wanted to be in the spotlight on Friday night, I made it.
It’s a different feeling when I play well and break an offensive coordinator’s game plan and get him to change his whole game book at halftime. It’s just a different feeling.
When I’m in the field, I don’t feel any pressure. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone but myself. I just go out there and make it happen.
I got my first offer during my first year of study in the spring. It was Southern Miss. I was excited and excited. I knew I was off to a good start since I was just a freshman and people were telling me I had potential. I knew I had to work harder and bigger, faster and stronger.
I want to thank God, my mother, my father, my sisters and my trainer Anthony Paradiso. You were very important to me. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to be where I am today, so it’s only right to thank them.
I am a very family oriented person. Love, respect, loyalty – that’s what I’m running away from. That was the first thing I looked for in college. Then it was about the team, the facilities and the training. And I found everything.
With that in mind, I am humble and blessed to announce that I am going to be a volunteer at Penn State University.
Penn State was the whole package. The feeling I got about what the coaches were telling me and how they are going to use me and the training there is second to none. It is one of the best educational systems in the nation.
The coaches were real down-to-earth people. I can talk to them every day about anything and everything, even family and personal matters.
The relationship with the coaches was very important to me. I’ve met a lot of good coaches, a lot of good people, but Penn State was just different.
I loved the facilities there. I haven’t seen anything like it on the other visits. Beaver Stadium is breathtaking in how many seats it offers. They showed on the big screen what it is like when it is full and what it sounds like. It just got me pumped up.
We have around 600 to 700 people at our home games. I don’t know what it will be like to play in front of 100,000 people, but I’m looking forward to it.
I am ready to live my dream.
source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/lake-nona-4-star-dl-zane-durant-announces-college-decision/
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