One of the best to ever do it at his position in Hillsdale College football history is going out with a bang.
Senior punter Jack Shannon snagged the last G-MAC Special Teams Player of the Week award for the season, the conference office announced on Monday, after a huge performance in a 21-17 Senior Day win over Ohio Dominican on Saturday.
The win gave Hillsdale a 6-5 record and locked up a share of second place in the G-MAC, the Chargers' best finish since the 2018 G-MAC championship season.
While the game was huge from a team perspective, an underrated subplot was the matchup between the two best punters, statistically, in the history of the G-MAC in Shannon and ODU's Jed Quackenbush.
Both players performed excellently in the contest, but Shannon had a slight edge, averaging 46.7 yards per punt with a long of 55 to Quackenbush's 45.8 average and long of 52. Shannon's seven punts for 327 yards helped Hillsdale gain a decisive advantage in the field position battle, forcing the Panthers to make long drives to score and buying the Charger defense time to slow ODU down and get critical stops that allowed Hillsdale to stay in position and pull ahead late.
Shannon finishes the regular season with a yards per punt average of 44.8, third in the nation at the NCAA Division II level, and tied Quackenbush for the longest punt in the G-MAC this year of 69 yards. His career average of 42.3 yards per punt is the second-most in G-MAC history, and he tied a G-MAC record with 447 punting yards in Hillsdale's 24-21 win over Tiffin on Oct. 2.
Photo by Isabella Sheehan