BOCA RATON, Fla. – For the second straight year, punter Matt Hayball has been named to the Conference USA All-Academic team, as announced by C-USA on Thursday.
Hayball makes his second appearance on the C-USA All-Academic team and also was an Academic All-American nominee. He continues the consecutive streak for the Owls to be represented on the 11-member team, selected by the league’s Faculty Athletic Representatives, joining Dillon DeBoer (2015, ’16) and Harrison Bryant (2018, ’19) as back-to-back honorees from FAU.
The West Adelaide, Australia native is a 2021 President’s List member, a four-time FAU Dean’s List member and served as the Owls’ special teams game captain four times in 2021. Hayball holds a 3.92 GPA in finance. He handled all the punt duties with 61 punts in 2021 and sits No. 17 nationally averaging 45.7 yards per punt. Twenty-eight punts have been downed inside the 20 and nearly half (30-of-61) his punts have either been touchbacks or fair caught (not returned). Seventeen 2021 punts have been 50+ yards.
The three-year stating punter has played in 35 games, tallying 174 career punt attempts for a total of 7,726 yards. His long is a 77-yard boot, and his career average stands at 44.4 yards per punt. Two of his three seasons as an Owls have ended with him slotted within FAU’s highest single-season yards per punt average. He is second in all-time career yards per punt (just 0.51 yards behind the top spot), with 11 more punt attempts and is second all-time in total yards with 7,776 while playing for a historically better team where placement has been more important than flipping the field.
All-Time Owls on the C-USA All-Academic Football Team
Dillon DeBoer, 2015
Dillon DeBoer, 2016
Greg Joseph, 2017
Jason Driskel, 2017
Harrison Bryant, 2018
Harrison Bryant, 2019
Matt Hayball, 2020
Matt Hayball, 2021
