Tennessee football signee Trinity Bell has had surgery to repair a ruptured ACL he sustained in a high school basketball game on New Year’s, Albertville High School basketball coach Patrick Harding announced.
“We just received surgery went well and are hopeful he will be ready for fall camp,” Harding tweeted Thursday afternoon. “Thanks to all those who reached out with thoughts and your prayers.”
Bell signed with the Vols out of Albertville, Alabama during the early signing period in December on Dec. 16. The 6-foot-7 athlete was committed to Tennessee for nearly seven months before signing.
“I am sad to announce Trinity Bell suffered a ruptured ACL in our game vs. Darlington Monday night and will miss the rest of our season,” Harding tweeted. “Trinity represented AHS in an exceptional manner in his five years as a varsity player.
“He is an absolute blast to coach and I look forward to following his progress at UT in the coming years. I’m biased but believe he’s one of the best to ever play at AHS. ”
The 247Sports composite rankings rank Bell as the No. 462 overall player in the country, the 30th athlete and 16th-best player in the state of Alabama. 247 themselves rank him as the 38th-best athlete and No. 20 overall in the Yellowhammer state.
This past season was the first that Bell solely focused on offense. He went on to catches 41 passes for 512 yards and two touchdowns. The year prior, 2019, he played football for the first time since the seventh grade and played on both sides of the ball.
“(Bell) is a guy that actually was in the seventh grade, my dad was the head football coach there and he called me and said, ‘listen, there’s a kid here in the seventh grade…I don’t know if he’s going to play in the NFL or play in the NBA, but he’s going to play somewhere,” Vols head coach Jeremy Pruitt said of Bell during the early signing period. “He’s a young man that I’ve known probably since he was 12 or 13 years old – he was probably 6-4 then. But a guy that’s 6-7-plus, 265 pounds, plays tight end, can play multiple positions. Plays defensive end. A guy that’s just extremely athletic.
“I talked to him the other night after a basketball game and I said, ‘so how many points did you have?’ He said, ‘I had seven dunks.’ So, I said, ‘did you make any free throws?’ He said, ‘I was 5-for-5.’ So, a guy that’s really, really athletic.”
Tennessee’s recruiting class of 19 signees currently ranks 15th nationally. It ranks as the sixth-best class in the SEC behind Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Texas A&M and Florida. The Vols’ class ranks ahead of Ole Miss, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi State, Kentucky, Auburn, Vanderbilt and South Carolina.
