Inside The Huskies

Huskies Reportedly Adding New Punter from Australia

Dusty Zimmer stands to replace three-year starting punter Jack McCallister.

Dan Raley

The Huskies are adding a punter from Australia in Dusty Zimmer.
The Huskies are adding a punter from Australia in Dusty Zimmer. / UW Athletics

After serving as the No. 1 punter for the past three seasons, Jack McCallister became the first University of Washington football player to disclose he was hustling out the door, skipping the Huskies' bowl game and heading for the transfer portal, which opens next week.

While no specific reason was offered for his departure in his farewell social-media posting, McCallister might have been given a little push in that direction -- with the UW football program adding Dusty Zimmer from Adelaide, Australia, as a new punter, according to a school posting.

Few details about Zimmer were available right away online other than he stands 6-foot-5 and played for the South Adelaide Football Club in 2020, an Australian football rules team that plays in a contact sport that requires 18 players on a side at any given time.

Clearly kickers from Australia have showed they have mastered the art of kicking to the point they can flourish in American football, with Michael Dickson a prime example, going from Australian rules football to the University of Texas to the Seattle Seahawks.

From Sydney, Dickson became a second-team AP All-America punter and a two-time All-Big 12 selection for the Longhorns, and was drafted by the Seahawks in the fifth round and has been a Pro Bowl pick.

On Wednesday, UW coach Jedd Fisch is expected to welcome at least 30 new scholarship recipients, barring any more defectors, once financial agreements are signed and collected. He meets with the media in early afternoon to discuss his new players.

In advance of the portal reopening, Fisch had said his coaches would meet with all of their current players to have frank discussions involving their envisioned roles on the team, which was certain to be discouraging to some Huskies and send them looking elsewhere for an opportunity to play.

Zimmer must be good because McCallister, who was a non-scholarship player, or walk-on, leaves with a career punting average of 42.3 yards per kick in his three years, including a 44-yard rate this season.

There's just no way Zimmer wasn't locked up some time ago, with some sort of promised financial aid in hand, which means McCallister probably had little job security moving forward and no way of securing similar scholarship assistance.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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