Shaka Toney, Penn State Football News: Draft Scout Player News

12/11/20 - DE Shaka Toney, rSr/2021, Penn State

By any measure, the Penn State football team's season has been a disappointment. At 2-5, there is no other way to label a program that had aspirations of being a contender for the national title before the campaign opened. But leave it to defensive end Shaka Toney, ever an eternal optimist, to see the positives in losing far more than winning. "Losing isn't fun, and I've never lost this many games in my career on any team," Toney said during a video conference with media on Tuesday. "Now, I've just learned how to handle it. I learned how I can get better from it and what I can do to help to get out of losing. It was all a lesson. It ain't the end of the world. … You've just got to maximize your opportunities when things don't always go as planned. You've got to learn situations and maximize situations when they don't got the best way.

"I just feel like it was a big learning year. There's a lot of things you can just take away this year that hopefully you worked on in yourself." Presumably, there is little refinement for Toney's affable, enthusiastic nature. Even with the guarantee that Penn State will have with a losing regular season for the first time since 2004, Toney preached the importance of completing the task at hand. "You don't win every marathon you run," Toney said. "You don't win every race. But if you finish, that's what means the most because now, you can get up and learn. Whereas if you quit and you just lay down and keep letting people walk all over you, you ain't learning nothing. You're not getting better. You're taking no lesson from the loss. All you're learning is that I can quit when stuff gets tough. "You always want to see things through. That's all we preach is to finish strong. It ain't always how you start. It's about how you finish." - Tribune Review

rSr/2021