Gillespie Comes From Storied Downingtown Area

Downingtown West High School had a very talented quarterback two years ago in Nolan Kearney and now another is waiting in the wings for the Class of 2010 in Bret Gillespie, a player who has put up similar numbers to Kearney in Downingtown West’s complex and vast offensive playbook.

Downingtown, Pa., native Bret Gillespie has yet to send on film on his junior year, however when teams do get to take a look at him there is a pretty good chance he’ll start to receive a much steadier flow of letters than he is currently. This 6-foot-2, 200-pound signal caller led his team to the Pennsylvania Class AAAA playoffs this season and put up some impressive numbers in the process.

“Right now I’d say the schools I like a lot are Clemson, Duke, Louisville, North Carolina, Penn State, Virginia and West Virginia,” Gillespie said. “I have been getting a lot of letters from Louisville and they have produced great quarterbacks like Hunter Cantwell and Brian Brohm, so I would love to work with their quarterback coach. The offensive is great because there is a lot of passing, so I’m definitely interested there.”

“I grew up a huge Penn State fan and used to go up to games when I was little, so that is always a team I’m going to have a ton of interest in,” Gillespie explained. “I think the most exciting game I ever attended was the 6-4 game against Iowa. They have the greatest student section in college football and I know the Devlin family well, so I have gotten to work with Pat’s dad a bit on some stuff. I love Penn State.”

As a junior, Gillespie completed 122 of 234 passes for 2046 yards and 20 touchdowns. He also carried the ball 71 times for 428 yards and five more scores.

Gillespie has a max bench press of 315 pounds, a max squat of 400 pounds and reports a 3.75 core GPA.