MORGANTOWN -- Long and restless nights had become somewhat normal to Terence Kerns as he spent suspenseful hours the past two years trying to qualify academically to play football at West Virginia University and worrying it might never happen.

That he was up after midnight last Friday morning wasn't a great surprise. He kept unusual hours and often had trouble sleeping throughout the process, but that process was about to come to an end.

The score from his latest ACT was available online July 11 and Kerns was ready to discover the result at the earliest opportunity possible. If the grade was high enough, he'd be able to play for the Mountaineers two years after committing. If it was too low, he was off to junior college for at least a year-and-a-half.

Kerns needed only to click the mouse a few times to learn the truth about the test he took July 1 at Thomas Johnson High, in Frederick, Md.

"I couldn't do it," he said. "I went to bed instead. I was too scared to look at it. I knew my whole life would be messed up if I didn't get it. I pretty much chickened out and waited until the morning."

His nerves finally gave way to sleep at around 5 a.m. A few hours later, he discovered he scored a 22 on the ACT, which when combined with his 2.5 GPA at prep school is good enough to qualify.

"I didn't think I'd ever get it," he said. "I was speechless when I found out."

As long as the NCAA Clearinghouse approves -- and there is no reason to believe that won't happen -- Kerns will report to WVU Aug. 1 and give the football team a needed boost in the backfield.

Practice begins the following day.

"It's great news for Terence and for us," Mountaineer Coach Bill Stewart said. "He's a big, powerful, fast back with great hands coming out of the backfield. He's 235 pounds of speed and muscle."

The status of another significant recruit, junior college defensive end Tevita Finau, is still uncertain. He's not out of the picture and still has a few weeks to complete his coursework and graduate on time. 

Kerns committed to WVU in the summer of 2006 and signed a letter-of-intent in February 2007, but couldn't get the right combination of GPA and test score to qualify academically. He spent from Aug. 2007 to May at Hargrave Military Academy, in Chatham, Va.

He said he took the SAT eight times and the ACT five times in the past two years.

"I took an ACT in June to determine if I could get there for the summer and going in I was so confident," he said. "I tried my hardest on that one and I got a 17. I was like, 'Man, if I couldn't do it that time, I'm never going to do it.'"

The pressure had an affect and Kerns found it difficult to escape the speculation. He'd go out and people would ask when he was leaving. He'd check his Facebook page online and discover dozens of messages wondering the same. He had no idea how to deal with it all.

"I pretty much lied to them just to get them off my back," he said. "They'd say, 'Terence, when are you leaving?' I'd be like, 'Two weeks.' Then they'd go and tell people I'd qualified. Two weeks would come and I'd have to come up with another answer."

Kerns knows he contributed to the confusion about his status but it was the only thing he could do to do deal with the attention.

"There are a lot of people here who say stuff about how I could be in the NFL one day. If you can't get into college, you can't get in the NFL," he said. "It kind of hurt knowing I might not make it. I didn't want people thinking that about me.

"There's a lot of talk here about has-beens and coulda-beens. A lot of people from here were good football players who didn't make it because they were too lazy in the classroom and didn't put the time and effort into it."

Kerns tried. He tried for his family. He tried for his coaches. He tried for his teammates. He tried for his community. He tried for WVU. It just never clicked.

"I'm not a guy who's going to cry," he said, "but one time I cried."

He finally figured out he was trying too hard, thanks to his mother, Tammy Thompson. As her son's last chance approached, she told him to stop trying to please everyone else and to do it for himself.

"That's what I needed," he said.

Kerns's test score is what the Mountaineers needed. He's 6-foot-1 and 233 pounds with a rare blend of speed and power -- and room to improve.

"He's got that burst, that fourth gear that a lot of kids don't have, especially a kid his size," said his high school coach, Ben Wright. "I think he's going to learn to break tackles a little better in college. In high school, he'd use a stiff arm and throw people off of him. He'll learn to follow blocks better, too."

Kerns has been working out with Wright all summer and has no trouble with multiple bench press reps above 300 pounds. Kerns ran 40-yard dashes last week and did every one under 4.4 seconds.

"I ran one and they said it was 4.29," Kerns said. "I wasn't trying to believe that, so we ran one electronically timed and it was a 4.31."