When D.K. Winn stood up at the table and triumphantly bellowed “Go Dogs!” after officially signing with South Carolina State to play football on Feb. 11, it marked the culmination of his Elbert County football journey, and the start of another in Orangeburg.
This fall, the Elbert County senior and star wide receiver will swap out the navy and white for garnet and blue as he joins head coach Chennis Berry’s Bulldogs.
Since Berry was hired in 2024, South Carolina State has finished 9-3 and 10-3 respectively in his two seasons. The Bulldogs capped off their 2025 season with a dramatic four-overtime victory over Prairie View A&M in the Celebration Bowl, the de facto championship for historically black colleges and universities.
“The program itself has a winning culture, and I’m used to winning,” Winn said. “Not only on the field, but off the field as well. They’re a pretty strong powerhouse with academics.”
Winn intends on studying mechanical engineering in college in addition to his goal of helping the Bulldogs continue their upward trajectory as a football program. He was visibly emotional once he put pen to paper at his signing day ceremony, clearly mindful of everything that went into this process.
Winn said he spent every day after the 2025 football season wrapped up sending his film to between 90-120 coaches, remarking "if you don’t, then you’re selling yourself short.”
That’s what it takes to get noticed out of a single-A school these days, in an era where college football “recruiting” has become increasingly geared towards pursuing active college players in the transfer portal. It’s gotten tougher for high school players to find landing spots, and Winn said his recruitment required a lot of prayer and proactivity.
Finally, in mid-December, Winn was contacted by South Carolina State offensive coordinator Johnathan Williams and they began communicating. An offer came around four weeks later, and Winn was relieved to know he had found a home.
“That late into the recruiting process, almost midway through my senior year, waiting for an opportunity, that’s kind of stressful, you know?” Winn said. “You don’t know what could happen, now with the transfer portal. You have to find the opportunity and take it.”
Winn has dreamed of playing college football since about five years old, and said he was inspired by his cousin and another speedy Blue Devil wideout, Mecole Hardman Jr.
“He was a phenomenal role model,” Winn said of Hardman. “That’s what I wanted to be.”
Like his cousin, Winn went on to star for the Blue Devils in several sports. He led Elbert in receiving in 2025 with 61 catches for 726 yards and eight touchdowns, also adding a kickoff return. The prior spring, he won an individual state championship in the triple jump, and he’s currently a standout for the Blue Devils’ basketball team.
Winn’s speed is perhaps his standout attribute, but he’s also got a knack for breaking tackles in the open field and is a willing blocker on the perimeter.
“What makes him tick on the field, other than ability, is he just always has a great attitude,” Elbert County head coach Andy Dyer said. “If something bad happens, he doesn’t change at all. He just keeps working and keeps playing. He has a great competitive spirit.”
In addition to his parents, Chaio and Chiquita Winn, Winn credited his wide receivers coach at Elbert County, Reuben Haynes, with helping forge that attitude.
He said back in eighth grade, Haynes pushed him to go the extra mile in the weight room and the classroom, and made sure that he showed up for early weight training on a few mornings where the eighth-grade Winn would have much rather slept in. But even then, Haynes said he was never concerned about Winn’s work ethic.
“I wasn’t necessarily worried about that because I knew that he loved the game and he wanted to be great,” Haynes said. “He brought his best effort every day, and that’s what got him where he is now, just that consistency.”
These days, Winn seems intent on not taking his opportunity for granted. That feeling might’ve intensified his junior season when, after a strong start to the year where he caught 22 passes for 307 yards in Elbert’s first four games, he lost the rest of his season to a torn meniscus.
“Patience is the main thing that I learned from that. I feel like everything happens for a reason,” he said. “So it’s a matter of how you bounce back from the situation. I feel like I did pretty good handling that situation– not giving up on myself, and coming back stronger than what I was before.”
Winn indeed worked his way back to have his strongest statistical season as a senior. His resolve through it all didn’t go unnoticed.
“He has the respect of probably every kid in the school building, and certainly has the respect of his teammates and his coaches,” Dyer said. “He’s a great young man with a great future.”
As far as his first year in college, Winn said he wants to make the Dean’s List and make an impact as a true freshman, whether that’s as a wideout or on special teams.
“Getting on the field is the first step and gaining the coaches’ trust that I can be the one to go out there and make plays,” he said. “Once I do that, the rest is history.”
Winn’s message to South Carolina State fans was simple— they’re getting an “An absolute playmaker, a ‘dawg’, someone who’s gonna be willing to take over.”
The senior said he’ll miss Elbert County and all the relationships he’s forged along the way, but looks forward to building new ones in Orangeburg.
And it’s safe to say that Elbert County will miss him, too. Dyer and Haynes both raved about Winn as a team captain, leader and overall teammate, citing him as a standard setter.
“I think kids like him leave a thumbprint on the program that they’re in,” Dyer said. “Being here at Elbert, he’s a guy that you can bring up to the younger kids and just use him as an example when needed, just in his work ethic and attitude.”
Winn’s next goal will be to leave that same thumbprint as a Bulldog.