Pinnick recently returned the favor by signing his National Letter of Intent to play football for the NCAA Division I institution in DeKalb, Ill., taking his 6-foot-4, 295-pound frame to the Mid-American Conference as an offensive lineman.

“It’s been a dream of mine since I was in first grade, since I started playing football,” Pinnick said at his signing ceremony. “Just all the hard work I put into this game, all the blood, sweat and tears, and just to finally sign that paper is amazing.”

Pinnick, the Times-Republican’s 2020 All-Area Football Co-Player of the year, was a three-time first-team all-state honoree by the Iowa Print Sports Writers Association, a four-time all-district selection, and the all-district Offensive Lineman of the Year twice.

The greatest reward arrived in the pandemic-plagued 2020 season, in which West Marshall went 8-2 with eight-straight wins before coming up one point short of a trip to the UNI-Dome and the Class 2A state semifinals.

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE - West Marshall High School senior Luke Pinnick, seated center, recently signed his National Letter of Intent to play football at Northern Illinois University, an NCAA Division I program in DeKalb, Ill. Joining Pinnick for his signing ceremony were his parents Jeff and Kristen and siblings Josh and Kate, and West Marshall football coaches (back row, from left) Austin Nichols, Cody Hackett and Chris Evertsen.

The Trojans finished ranked 10th in the state by The Associated Press, but Pinnick still put this past season atop all the rest before it.

“My senior year was just the best year that we’ve had throughout my four years of high school,” he said. “It felt like our team had the best chemistry this year, was the most fun, we clicked on a bunch of different levels and it felt like we succeeded the most.”

The Trojans totaled their best season since going 9-2 in 2013, which signaled the end of the Ken Winkler era. One of his former pupils, Cody Hackett, took up the reins and in 2020 led his alma mater to within one win of the final four.

The formula? Follow the big guy.

“I was told by a couple of coaches that when you have great players like that, you only get them for four years so you better use them,” Hackett said of Pinnick. “We tried to put Luke in the best position for us to be successful. Obviously coaches watch film and I’m sure fans and everybody else knew who we were going to run behind, obviously we had tendencies, and we were going to run behind Luke and he still did a tremendous job.

“You know you’re going to be a successful team when the defense knows what you’re going to do and you’re still successful doing them on Friday night.”

West Marshall led all of Class 2A with 325.5 rushing yards per game, piling up 40 rushing touchdowns as junior tailback Preston Pope picked up 1,842 yards and 24 touchdowns along the way. The Trojans ranked third in the state by scoring 37.5 points per game, oftentimes running right behind their hulking left tackle.

While he didn’t score single touchdown in four years in the black and gold, he’s just as responsible for many of the Trojans’ trips into the end zone.

“Football’s a team sport and I’m glad to play any position that will help my team in any way to be successful,” Pinnick said.

He was both elated and relieved to render his services to Northern Illinois, which will likely move Pinnick somewhere between the tackles as his collegiate career begins next year.

“It was a long process throughout the recruiting, and just to be able to sign felt like a huge weight off my shoulders so I could just focus on one school and not have all that drama,” Pinnick said. “Throughout the recruiting process, my biggest thing was just wanting to be with a school that really wanted me. There are some schools that maybe will show interest a little bit and then go another direction; ever since the beginning, NIU has been a school that has loved me from the beginning and they wanted me the entire way throughout the process and I really respect that.”

Pinnick was ranked as a three-star recruit and the state’s 23rd-best college prospect from the class of 2021 by 247sports.com. Northern Illinois earned its ranking as No. 1 for Pinnick after beating out scholarship offers from Iowa State, Kansas, Southern Illinois and Western Illinois.

“He had a goal his freshman year that he wanted to get a D-I scholarship,” Hackett said. “He’s going somewhere where they really enjoy him. They’re a college that made him feel like they wanted him throughout the whole process.”