Football working for Fennell
BUTLER TWP — Baseball is tradition in his family.
His father, Jay Fennell, was a longtime high school baseball coach and instructor. Brothers Jason and Mick Fennell were drafted by the Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Cardinals, respectively. Another brother, Ryan, had a successful diamond career at La Roche College.
But for Jack Fennell, football just fits.
“With his speed and overall skills, he could have been the best out of all my boys in baseball,” Jay Fennell said of Jack. “But football’s always come first for him.
“When he was 7 or 8, his mother ran a day-care during the summer and we played pick-up football games in the yard. I was the quarterback. That’s when it all started for Jack. He fell in love with the game.”
And football’s been pretty good to him.
As a junior running back for North Catholic last season, he ran for over 800 yards and scored nine touchdowns. But he wasn’t satisfied.
“I wanted to get faster and stronger,” Jack said. “I knew I could do better. I worked harder to understand the offensive gameplan, get more familiar with the vocabulary.”
His father said Jack was frustrated because he was getting no college football offers as a junior and considered pursuing baseball as his post-high school sport.
“We called around and the Colorado Rockies were going to come take a look at him, maybe a couple of other teams,” Jay Fennell said.
But football kicked in this year.
Fennell carried the ball 181 times for 1,311 yards and 23 touchdowns. He averaged 7.5 yards per rush. He also caught 15 passes for approximately 160 yards.
Jack returned two kickoffs for touchdowns this season. He does the punt returning as well. Also a cornerback on defense, he never leaves the field.
In the Trojans’ last five regular season games, he scored 16 of the team’s 18 touchdowns. His season ended abruptly in the second quarter of North’s 49-0 playoff loss to Trinity when he had to leave the game with what was later diagnosed as sprained neck muscles.
“It gets a little tiring at times,” Jack admitted of never leaving the field. “It was tougher early in the season, but I became more conditioned as the season went on.”
Also a sprinter on the North Catholic track team and a pitcher-outfielder for the Trojan baseball squad, Jack ran a personal-best 11.1 in the 100 meters at the WPIAL Championships last spring.
“I was dealing with a hamstring issue then,” Jack recalled. “After running the 100, I went to Plum because we had a baseball playoff game there that same day.”
Baseball gave Jack quite a scare in November of last year. During an informal practice at an indoor facility, he was pitching when a line drive was hit right at him, striking him in the back of the head.
“I hung a curve ball,” he said. “I was knocked out for 10 minutes. I was taken to the hospital and couldn’t do anything for a month.
“The doctors talked to me in the hospital. They knew I was an athlete and they kept my hopes up. I knew I’d play again. It made me determined to work even harder to get back.”
He returned to baseball and track that spring. Jack said he will play both sports again in the spring of 2024.
“Then that’s it. It will be all football,” he said.
Jack will continue his academic and football career at Davidson College, an FCS school in North Carolina and a member of the Pioneer League. Coach Scott Abell is on his way to a sixth straight winning season as the Wildcats are 6-2 this season, averaging 43 points per game.
“Since he got hit in the head, Jack has had trouble judging fly balls at night and seeing the ball at the plate at night,” his father said. “Now he’s got the chance to continue playing the game he loves in college.
“Everything worked out for him.”
