2022 Allstate AFCA Good Works Team Nominees
Matt Pardi, a returning D3football.com All-Region and All-North Coast Athletic Conference punter, is The College of Wooster football team's nominee for the 2022 Allstate American Football Coaches Association Good Works Team. Pardi was among the 114 student-athletes announced by the organization as nominees this week. The 22-member team will be announced in September.
Pardi's community service portfolio is headlined by participation in the Wooster Community Health Coach Program, a partnership between the College and Wooster Community Hospital. Pardi makes weekly patient home visits through the partnership and helps create a comprehensive care plan to improve patient health and quality of life. Through the partnership, Pardi forms relationships and improves quality of care within the Wooster community, and Wooster's health coach program is one of the largest of its type nationally.
Elsewhere, Pardi will be a seven-semester Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) representative when he graduates in May. He helps lead the organization's annual Adopt-A-Family event at the end of the fall semester, where Wooster has raised $9,000 and has helped approximately 30 families in the three years Pardi has been part of the service project. Additionally, he produces the popular "Kickers Try" video series that runs during Div. III Week.
On the field, Pardi was a second-team D3football.com All-Region and second-team All-NCAC selection following the 2021 season. He enjoyed one of the top seasons in program history, evidenced by averaging 42.9 yards per punt. Pardi had a higher average than Myndret Busack's 1948 school record of 42.2 yards per punt, but due to the offense's high level of success, he did not meet the minimum punts required for the program's single-season list and the NCAA Div. III leaderboard, where he would have led the nation for the 2021 season. Pardi maximized his opportunities to significantly alter games when his services were needed, specifically in a win at Wabash College. There, he averaged a single-game school-record 55.5 yards over four punts and was instrumental in the closing seconds by getting off a 55-yard punt to Wabash's 20 yard line in the final 30 seconds, while also having to handle a high snap on the play. Earlier in the win at Wabash, Pardi pinned the Little Giants at their 1-yard line, thanks to a career-long 66-yard punt.
Pardi, a biology major, is an academic standout as well, qualifying twice for the NCAC Academic Honor Roll. Additionally, he was voted to the College Sports Information Directors of America's Academic All-District® Team for the 2020-21 academic year. He is looking to become the second Wooster player to make the Allstate AFCA Good Works Team. Patrick Mohorcic, a 2018 alumnus, made the 2017 team, and went on to be voted team captain.