MORGANTOWN — When West Virginia’s spring football session ended 10 days ago, one of the most positive factors to rise out of it was that the Mountaineers could pronounce running back CJ Donaldson healthy for the coming year.

Considering that he emerged from nowhere on opening day 2022 to run over, around and through Pitt to burst onto the national scene before his season ended prematurely with a broken ankle in the seventh game, there were many eyes on him throughout the spring observing his every move.

With as much at stake for the WVU program this year as there is, much was riding on his recovery and he passed every evaluation, a fact that became far more important on Monday of this week when veteran running back Tony Mathis announced he was entering the transfer portal.

Mathis, who was last season’s leading ground gainer, saw Coach Neal Brown stacking the running back room with a variety of talents, led by Donaldson, and decided to go play his final season somewhere where there would be more carries than he would get in Morgantown.

That would have been a tough blow for WVU’s plans to live off its running game had Donaldson been questionable heading into the season, but now it just seems to open up carries and catches for the versatile 240-pound Floridian from Gulliver Prep.

Being injured and rehabbing were eye-opening experiences for Donaldson, who had spent most of his time in high school as a wide receiver or tight end rather than running back, which in some ways is as different as moving from catcher to centerfield in baseball.

“I remember when I first got hurt, I was taking playing the sport for granted because I wasn’t used to getting hurt,” he said following the spring game. “I played receiver all my life. I was used to catching the ball and running out of bounds.”

It’s different, being hit as a wide receiver and being hit as a running back and you can’t imagine how different until you do it.

“My coach, he’s right here,” Donaldson said, pointing to a tattoo on his left arm. “Coach Corey. He’s the one who put me at running back. That was the first and last time I played running back until now. I’m not used to being hit low. I’m now learning how to brace my body and protect my body.”

Believe it or not, there is an art to being tackled, just as there is an art to tackling.

“Coach Scott,” he said, referring to Chad Scott, the running back coach who was promoted to offensive coordinator this season, “has been teaching me how to protect myself by applying force, instead of allowing the force to hit me, if that makes sense. Don’t take the hit, deliver the hit.”

And once you take the hit, the idea is to get to the ground.

“Coach Scott just says ‘Fall.’ Like, just fall. Get down. That helps me protect my body so I can play the game I love,” he said.

He found out how much he loved last season as he watched his teammates play while he couldn’t even walk.

“Throughout that process just made me hungrier. It made me want to play more and more every day watching the team run out of the tunnel and being on the sideline not being able to play,” he said.

That helped him attack his rehab, recovering faster than anyone thought he could.

“I want to give a big shoutout to our weight room and our training staff. They prepared me very well to be able to play (in the spring game),” he said. “I was like one month ahead of the time I was expected to return. I was walking in early December and I wasn’t supposed to start walking until late January.”

It was important that he get this spring in, for he is an inexperienced running back, as evidenced by not even knowing how to handle getting hit, and had much to learn so he could go to work on game planning in the fall.

“My first game against Pitt, I didn’t get hit much. I didn’t know it would feel like this. Now I’m not scared of contact or anything like that, but when you get hit by 11 people it can feel like this,” he said.

“My second game against Kansas, that’s when I found out, it can feel like this. I had that wake-up call. You get hit with 11 people attacking you. I’m not used to being hit by D-linemen. I’m used to be hit by linebackers and corners and safeties and people like that.”

The difference was emphasized right away in his first practices as a Mountaineer freshman.

I went against Dante Stills last year. He was a powerhouse. He welcomed me to college “football,” he said.

There really is so much to learn, major items and little discussed but equally important items like vision.

“We work on eye control every day in the running back room. Eye control is a big part of the game. In order to be a running back in this program, you have to have great eye control,” he said.

It isn’t only the quarterback who must make reads. So do the running backs and while Donaldson won’t go into it in detail, fearing that an opponent would go so low as to read what he has to say, he did discuss how he has learned to use his eyes.

“One person who helped me a lot was Jalen Anderson. I think he has probably the best eye control in the room. He’s able to make some great cuts. I have just been watching his game, taking a little bit of it and applying it to my game,” he said.

You may have trouble recognizing Donaldson this season, not because of the injury or any changes that came through rehab.

Instead, he has changed his uniform number from No. 12 to No. 4.

“I’d been wearing No. 4 since Little League, since Optimist football, and that’s the number I want. My nickname, beside CJ, is C4 because I always ran go routes as a receiver, which is what you run when they are throwing a bomb, so it goes hand in hand.

“C4 is an explosive.”

So is Donaldson.