Until last week, it was easier for Austin Wolf to separate from a five-star cornerback recruit than define what grayshirting meant. Not now.

A gifted receiver equipped with newly developed jets, Wolf agreed on Sunday to accept a grayshirt scholarship offer to play football at the University of Cincinnati. That means the senior won’t enroll at UC until January 2014.

That’s the current plan. Depending on de-commits from its 2013 recruiting class, injuries and other unforeseen reasons should current players not return, Wolf’s grayshirt could turn into a scholarship for next fall.

Regardless, he’s set for five years at UC.

“I had to think about it,” Wolf said. “Once I heard all the details about it, I visited and talked to all of the coaches, I decided that a grayshirt is not a bad thing; it can be a good thing.”

Grayshirting is a relatively recent way college athletic programs get around landing recruits without an available scholarship. The extra plus is the recruit is a year older. The gamble is the recruit won’t stray to another program.

Add five years at a school – including a traditional redshirt season – and it’s easy to see how grayshirts who stick it out are older than most teammates. That was the case with former St. Henry High School and Ohio State University quarterback Todd Boeckman.

At 6 feet 4 and 205 pounds, Wolf was a big-time target for returning QB Luke Morgan last season. Wolf snagged 32 receptions for 663 yards for a whopping 20.7 average. And that was before he developed sprinter’s speed.

If Lebanon is to improve on last season’s 7-3 record, it’ll start with that productive combo.

“They’re going to be as good a 1-2 punch as you’ll find in Southwest Ohio,” assured Warriors coach Sean Lamb. “(Wolf) probably has the best hands that we’ve had at Lebanon in recent memory.”

Driven to succeed, Wolf lowered his 40-yard dash time to 4.38 and 4.39 in summer camps at Akron, Bowling Green and UC. That put him on a level with former Lebanon blazer Chase Cochran, now a redshirt sophomore receiver at Ohio.

Wolf also participated in the recent Friday Night Lights summer camp at OSU.

“I wanted to see how I fared against the top cornerbacks in the state,” he said. “I felt I did pretty good.”

Fast track

Eric Ways is the one that got away from Dunbar.

Ways won last week’s AAU national championship in the 400 meters for the 15-16 itermediate age group at Morgan State University in Baltimore, blazing a 48.10. He lives in North Carolina and attends a Virginia academy, but his father is Keith Ways, veteran coach of the Dayton Wolverines summer youth track and field club (ages 7-17).

Keith, a 1973 Chaminade grad, said that if Eric lived in Dayton, he would have attended Dunbar. Talk about the rich getting richer. The Wolverines won the D-II boys state track title last spring.

Eric’s godfather is Dunbar coach Sidney Booker. His cousin is former Dunbar standout Antonio Blanks, who recently completed an All-American season as an OSU freshman by making the NCAA final in the 400 hurdles and competing in the U.S. Olympic trials.

“I hope to follow in (Blanks’) footsteps,” said Eric, a junior this fall. “He always reminds me to stay humble and keep working hard.”