After dealing with a hamstring injury last season, West Virginia wide receiver Reese Smith is hoping his work is finally going to pay off.
“It knocked me down, I was really frustrated at first. I’m not one of those guys who is going to feel sorry for myself and lay down, so I went right back to work the next day,” Smith said. “I was getting treatment two or three times a day, doing everything I could to get back.”
Smith went on to say despite the change in working out and practicing because of the hamstring injury it did not hold him back from getting his body where it needed to be once again.
“When I did it of course I had to watch out for it and go down a little bit of the intensity but I’ve picked right back where I was.”
For the majority of Smith’s playing time at WVU he has been put on mostly special teams. Over the offseason Smith recently had a talk with Neal Brown and they both discussed what he needed to do to get the desired playing time Smith would like.
“I went in there with the mindset of how can I be better on the field. More importantly he’s going to tell me straight just because he’s recruited me ever since I was a sophomore in high school,” Smith said. “We had one of those conversations where it was, coach, I need to play more, I’m playing a lot of special teams, but I want to play a lot more offensive and he told me what I had to do and it was straightforward.”
Later on in the interview Smith was asked how he feels about being a part of special teams. He mentioned how before coming to WVU he never processed the importance of it.
“I didn’t play them in high school, I just did punt return in high school and that was it,” Smith said. “When I got here it was kind of a slap in the face a little bit but once I got playing I love special teams.”
Last year Smith played in 13 games for the Mountaineers and started two. He finished the year with 12 catches and a total of 124 yards while averaging 10.3 yards per catch.
