Florida Tech Football Announces 2016 Recruiting Class, Sign 28 Players

By  //  February 4, 2016

Florida-Tech-580-4
On Wednesday, Florida Tech head football coach Steve Englehart announced the addition of FIT’s newest members on National Signing Day. (SpaceCoastDaily Image)

BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – On Wednesday, Florida Tech head football coach Steve Englehart announced the addition of FIT’s newest members on National Signing Day.

Of the 28 new Panthers, 22 hail from the Sunshine State. FIT also added a pair of recruits from Ohio and South Carolina as well as one player each from Mississippi and Texas.

“Florida is rich in football talent across the state and we’ve always felt like we could stay within the state,” said Englehart.

Steve Englehart
Steve Englehart

“We did get up into South Carolina and pulled two kids from there that we think are really good football players, as well as Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. Last year we got into Georgia and Alabama a little bit.”

“We’ll always go a little bit out of the state but we feel like the bulk of our class will always be in the state of Florida,” said Englehart.

Six members of the class are midyear transfers that are already enrolled at FIT in Danian Alvarez, Adonis Davis, Troy Gatling, Steven Gilbert, Romell Guerrier and David Howell.

The Panthers added another pair of transfers in Ryan Singer and Astronaut High School product J.T. Hassell who will come in during the fall.

When setting up the recruiting board, Englehart and his staff targeted offensive lineman and defensive back as two positions that were key to the class.

“Those are positions that we identified at the beginning of the year as ones to target,” he stated.

“They’re not where we’re going to be short this year but where we’ll be short two years from now. We feel like we have great depth with our upperclassmen on our team so when those upperclassmen go we need to rebuild that depth and I feel like we’ve done that with this recruiting class.”

While the numbers were thinner this year on players from Brevard County, the Panthers feel they have added a pair of difference makers in Hassell and Letwan Sutton.

Hassell comes back home to the Space Coast after playing in 26 games and starting 14 contests at Division I FCS South Dakota State.

8 Florida Tech Panthers Selected to Don Hansen All-Super Region Two Team In FootballRelated Story:
8 Florida Tech Panthers Selected to Don Hansen All-Super Region Two Team In Football

Sutton, an incoming freshman from Rockledge High School, was the Raiders’ team MVP in 2014.

For more information on the entire FIT signing class, access the Signing Day Central page at the link below.

SIGNING DAY CENTRAL PAGE