The Week 0 matchup between Georgia Tech and Florida State at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, is a impartial website game for all people on each groups — besides for Yellow Jackets punter David Shanahan.
Shanahan is from Castleisland, County Kerry, Ireland, and is believed to be the primary Ireland native ever awarded a full scholarship to play American school soccer. On Aug. 24, he’ll have the chance to play in his home nation.
“I’m excited for the kid to have an opportunity to go home,” Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key stated. “It’s exciting anytime any kid gets to go back to their home, especially when it’s far away from here.”
When he received to Georgia Tech, Shanahan — now a senior — thought there was a distant chance that he’d be capable of play a game in Ireland, but figured the percentages could be slim provided that Georgia Tech already performed in Ireland in 2016. But throughout spring ball in 2022, Shanahan recalled Key calling him over throughout apply and asking him “cryptic” questions on Ireland.
“Usually he’s over the O-line shouting at them somewhere. He’s not really having a conversation midpractice,” he stated. “I kind of caught on to it after a while because I knew the game was coming up and I knew they hadn’t announced a fixture for 2024. But eventually he told me, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty sick.'”
Shanahan walked a winding path to American school soccer. Growing up, rugby and Gaelic soccer had been his fundamental sports activities. He in contrast the fervour that individuals in Ireland have for Gaelic soccer to the fervour individuals have within the United States for American soccer.
“When you’re 15, you’re training really hard, you’re in the gym really hard,” he stated. “I’m from Kerry, so every town in Kerry will have their own club, and then the best guys in their club will get to play for their county. So I was playing for the county underage squads.”
Shanahan was a member of the Kerry U17 Gaelic soccer “panel” that gained the 2017 Munster championship (Gaelic soccer’s nationwide title) on the U17 degree. But as he approached maturity, Shanahan’s ardour for the game waned, and he started wanting for a new problem.
“There wasn’t a lot of adventure there, I thought. Because I say, ‘Alright, best-case scenario, I’ll just grow up and play for Kerry and never really leave my hometown’ or whatever. That’s something that didn’t really excite me that much.”
Instead, he received into American soccer. Enough of the mechanics he’d already discovered had been relevant to the American game that Shanahan believed that he might make the soar. “Obviously the skill set translated,” he stated. “I tried my hand at kicking for a bit, but it just didn’t really come as naturally as punting did. But even saying that, punting was really hard, it took me a while to actually get good, get consistent at it.”
Shanahan realized there have been steps he wanted to take with the intention to attain his full potential. That’s the place he provides a lot of credit score to his dad and mom, Jack and Eliza, for trusting him to take a leap of religion.
“I was 18 years old, and I was like, ‘Hey guys, I want to move to Australia, the other side of the world, go to this place in the suburbs of Melbourne, punt footballs for a year to try and get a scholarship to America.'”
In the previous decade or so, Australia has emerged because the unlikely home for lots of soccer’s greatest punters. That’s largely due to Prokick Australia in Melbourne, an academy based in 2007 by Nathan Chapman, an Australian guidelines footballer who performed in three preseason video games for the Green Bay Packers in 2004. Prokick has produced six of the previous seven Ray Guy Award winners and 4 present NFL punters. Shanahan felt that if he needed to interrupt into high-level American soccer, he needed to go the world over in a totally different course first.
“I worked, I saved up money and stuff. But for [my parents] to agree to that and fully support me is probably something that gets glossed over a little bit, just how much of a commitment that was from them — as much as me — to have their youngest son moving halfway across the world to some country they’ve never been before, doing something they know nothing about.”
Shanahan labored on his household’s farm, at his dad’s pharmacy, took cash he had beforehand saved from previous birthdays, his First Communion and his affirmation, and used all of it to maneuver to Melbourne on the finish of August in 2019. But he was ultimately pressured to return to Ireland to quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shanahan, his brother Rob and his dad and mom had been collectively at their home for quarantine. They turned their shed into a gymnasium, the place the brothers would work out. Once they had been performed within the shed, David and Rob would stroll 20 minutes behind their home to their farm, kick for 2.5 hours and return home.
“Honestly, I had a great time during COVID,” he stated.
While he was honing his expertise on the farm, the workforce at Prokick was looking for a touchdown spot for Shanahan. He in contrast the method to the ordering of a pizza.
“Coach rings them up, he tells them, ‘We want a guy that can do this, this and this.’ And then they take a look at their group of guys and [see] which guy would fit here. So they come up to you and say, ‘Hey, this school is interested in finding someone. Would you be interested in going here if they give you a scholarship?’ And if you say yes, and they give you a scholarship, that’s where you’re going. There’s no going back.”
Shanahan stated they had been speaking to a couple of ACC faculties, after which one Tuesday morning, he woke as much as a textual content from Prokick coach John Smith.
“He’s like, ‘Hey we’re jumping on a Zoom with Georgia Tech tomorrow. I’m sure you’d be interested in going here?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’
“Then they despatched all of them of my movie, after which I woke as much as a textual content most likely three or 4 days later, and it is like, ‘You’re dedicated to Georgia Tech.’ It occurred fairly fast.”
Shanahan announced his commitment to Tech on May 15, 2020. He was supposed to arrive in Atlanta in January of 2021, but because of the added COVID year, he was told there wouldn’t be any scholarships open until May.
He wanted to still continue to work at his craft in the meantime, but he couldn’t go back to Australia because of COVID restrictions. Shanahan’s coaches at Prokick recommended he go see Tom Hackett — a two-time Ray Guy Award winner and Prokick alum — in Utah to continue to grow. Shanahan made the journey to Utah, worked on his game and eventually ended up in Atlanta. He played his first American football game for the Yellow Jackets against Northern Illinois on Sept. 4, 2021.
It was an accomplishment just to make it onto the field, but Shanahan still had growing to do, especially when it came to understanding the game and situational punting.
“That was positively an adjustment,” he said. “I can at all times sit again and boot a soccer, but it is most likely extra situational stuff, realizing like when the push is coming, if you simply received to get it off, if you’re backed up ultimately zone you bought to shorten your steps, and the pooch punting.
“Obviously, a lot of that situational stuff, I definitely was not good at it as a freshman, and I would just go out there and kind of swing my leg and hope for the best. But that’s something that’s come out of experience, and coaches have been really good at helping me with all that. But I feel like I pretty much have it all down now. I’ve been doing it for long enough.”
The changes on the sphere are essential, and Key emphasised that is not one thing for anybody to gloss over in Shanahan’s journey. But Key additionally praised Shanahan for adjusting to every little thing off the sphere as effectively.
“To make the transition to live here, the transition academically, he never looked back, and it was never anything that was a struggle for him,” Key stated. “Other than his accent, he plays right into everyone else.”
The Aer Lingus College Football Classic would be the first time that Shanahan’s household has been collectively for one among his video games. Each participant was given two tickets for household and mates, but Shanahan was capable of get some from his teammates, and his dad bought 20 extra tickets to offer the household what Shanahan estimated to be at the very least 40 complete seats.
Along along with his pleasure for having his household in attendance, Shanahan is hoping to introduce his teammates to native breakfast.
“It’s blood pudding,” he stated. “You may mistake it for sausage, but it’s not really sausage. Coach Key hated it. I asked our nutritionist yesterday, ‘We’re having the pudding aren’t we?’ And she’s like, ‘Coach Key said he absolutely does not want to see that.’ I was like, ‘What are we doing here?’ But I’m going to sneak some blood pudding in.”
“He can introduce them all they want,” Key stated. “I’m staying away from it. I’ll take my eggs and my grits.”
That’s nice. Shanahan has some much less objectionable issues he’d like to point out his teammates and coaches, too: “There’s a couple of bars in Dublin that I’d love to take them to if we win.”
