<\/p>\n
On September 24, 1966, Tom Pinckard just did what he was on the football field to do: punt the ball as far as he could. And did he ever.<\/p>\n
The ball travelled an astounding 114 yards. The current CFL record, and until now considered the longest punt ever, dates back to 1977 when kicker Zenon Andrusyshyn logged a 108-yarder.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t a position Pinckard usually occupied. Normally the team’s snapper, he was called on to make the punt that day in a game against Saint Dunstan’s University (which later became UPEI) because the kicker was injured.<\/p>\n
“I could kick,” he said in a media release. “I would always come out to practice and guys would shag punts for me, but I wasn\u2019t the kicker because I was the long ball snapper, so I couldn\u2019t be in both positions at the same time. But the kicker got hurt, so that day, I was the punter.”<\/p>\n
Fifty-three years later, Pinckard will finally get the recognition he deserves.<\/p>\n
U Sports, Canada’s governing body of university varsity sports, is acknowledging his accomplishment.<\/p>\n
A film of the launch of his historic punt has survived, but it cuts off before the ball lands. Three players who were on the field at the time as well as the official time keeper of that game have signed affidavits confirming what they witnessed\u2014Pinckard kicked the ball from his team’s own 21-yard line and after a solid bounce it stopped only when it hit the fence at the end of the field. (A punt is measured from the line of scrimmage to the point where it is either caught by a player or it goes out of bounds, and includes both air travel and any distance it gains through bounces.)<\/p>\n
“There were so many elements to that kick that you couldn\u2019t repeat,” he said. “The weather conditions, the fact it wasn\u2019t wet. Had it been, it wouldn\u2019t have got the bounces it got.”<\/p>\n