LUMBERTON — Jacoby Pevia has had to overcome both an undersized physical frame and injury adversity through his high school career. But he always had speed.

The Lumberton senior signed Friday to run track at the University of Mount Olive.

“It means everything,” Pevia said. “(Being a college athlete) has been a dream since I was little. I thought it was going to be football, but as I matured and grew up, football’s still there; I actually had some offers from football. … But track came along and I ran with it.”

The 5-foot-5, 160-pound Pevia will join a Trojans program that competes in NCAA Division II in Conference Carolinas, the same league as UNC Pembroke.

“I went up there on a visit, I liked the campus, the coaches were very welcoming, the staff,” Pevia said. “I went down to one of the practices and all the players were engaging with me, talking to me. So yeah, it felt like home.”

Pevia finished sixth in the 400 meters at the North Carolina High School Athletic Association’s 4A Mideast Regional this spring in 50.62 seconds. He was also part of the Pirates’ 4×400 relay that finished 13th at the regional.

“(He’s) one of the hardest-working kids I’ve ever met,” Lumberton track coach Quentin Pate said. “A true, genuine young man, every respectful, heck of a kid. Mount Olive, I know for a fact, they will not have second thoughts at all about wanting him to come and helping the university excel in everything.”

Pevia was also a two-time All-County selection in football, in 2021 and 2023, as a running back for the Pirates. He ran for 882 yards and 14 touchdowns in his senior season.

He suffered a torn ACL playing football, in the final game of his sophomore season in 2022. He completed rehab and recovery within seven months and did not miss any time in the 2023 season.

“I made it back for football season, had a great football season and then came back to track, and it just all worked together,” Pevia said. “All the rehab hours, it was all worth it.”

“Dealing with adversity, that’s coming with the nature of sports, but for him to be undersized such as he is and to bounce back with the injury that he had, that’s just a true testament to the type of hard-working kid that he is,” Pate said. “He could’ve easily laid down and stopped doing what he did, just gave up, but he had a goal in mind and he went out and he achieved that goal.”

Pevia graduated from the Public Schools of Robeson County Early College High School on May 17.

Pevia will join Fairmont’s Travelius Leach and Emanuel Oxendine at Mount Olive after both signed with the Trojans track team last week. The trio have trained together and competed together with a club team for the last couple of years.

“(It’s great) having somebody up there that you know; I’ve worked out with them boys and trained with them all the time,” Pevia said. “We push each other in practice, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to push each other up there and be there for each other too.”

Pevia also had a football offer from St. Andrews and had interest from the track programs at Livingstone, Guilford and UNCP.