Six graduates from Trinity High School’s football team have moved up to college football and one of them will play in the East-West All-Star Football game Wednesday, July 21, at Grimsley High School.

TJ Bulla is only the third Trinity player in the 62-year history of the all-star game to be selected. The game features 66 players from across the state, selected by a group of six all-star coaches. The coaches are selected by the North Carolina High School Athletic Association. Players report today (July 15) to start a week of practice to get ready for the game.

Josh Stevens, 2006, and John McEachin, 2004, are the other Trinity football players who played all-star. Bulldog Head Coach Alex Mebane was selected to coach in last year’s (2009) game, which makes Bulla Trinity’s fourth representative in seven years.

Bulla will play at Guilford College in the fall. Theron Williamson, Angelo Dunn and Mario McInnis will join Ferrum College’s football program. Ron Griffin will be at Appalachian State and Andrew McGavic, at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

Griffin (punter/kicker) and McGavic (offensive lineman) will walk on. Both are waiting to find out whether they will have a spot on the team this fall or will have to wait until spring practice. The NCAA limits the number of people who can be on a squad. The other four Bulldogs were actively recruited, but did not receive any athletic grant or aid money for football. Guilford and Ferrum both compete at the division 3 level, where no athletic scholarship money is given, according to NCAA specifications.

Bulla will play linebacker, Dunn will play fullback, Williamson will play offensive lineman and McInnis will play quarterback/defensive back.

Mebane is proud of the Bulldogs’ accomplishments.

“We have been through a lot of adversity in our football program over the past couple of years, losing half our football players and losing our entire staff of assistants.... We have finished third in our conference two years in a row and had a winning regular season record overall and in conference play for the first time since 2005,” he said. “We have now had 14 young men, including the six this year, to go on and play at least one year of college football in my four seasons at Trinity and we have had a rep in the All-Star game two years in a row.”

Mebane pointed out that Trinity has had all-star representation in other sports, as well. In recent years, Josh King (2004), Head Coach Tim Kelly (2005) and Josh Pittman (2009) represented the Bulldogs in men’s basketball; and Ken Spell (1994) and Brad Dalton (1997) in soccer.

LeAnn Kennedy played all-star for women’s basketball in 1988.