Penn State WR Mac Hippenhammer no longer on football roster, reportedly focusing on baseball
Penn State wideout Mac Hippenhammer, a two-sport athlete who also played baseball the last two seasons, is no longer with the football team.
Hippenhammer, a rising redshirt junior, was not listed on the football team’s updated roster Monday afternoon. Lions 247 first broke the Hippenhammer news, while adding he planned to focus on baseball.
A Penn State spokesperson confirmed Hippenhammer remained a member of the baseball team. However, the spokesperson did not know Hippenhammer’s future plans.
Hippenhammer first arrived in Happy Valley in 2017 after attending the same high school as two-sport athlete Rod Woodson, a Hall of Fame safety, at R. Nelson Snider in Indiana. He was a three-star prospect in football there, and he batted .431 as a high school senior.
At Penn State, where he always intended to play both sports, he was a situational football player and a starting baseball player. Although he got off to a slow start this spring season, starting in 13 of 14 games and batting .205, the speedy utility man batted .272 last season.
As a wideout for the Nittany Lions, he caught six balls for 103 yards and a touchdown in his redshirt freshman season. But, last year, he played in just eight games and caught one ball for 15 yards.
He was widely regarded as a longshot to see serious playing time this fall, even though he was among the team’s most-seasoned receivers.
Baseball appeared to be a different story.
“The biggest thing about Mac is he’s completely unselfish; he wants to do whatever he can to help the team,” baseball coach Rob Cooper told the Centre Daily Times last season. “I do believe if we had time to really work on his infield skills, I think he could be an elite shortstop. I really do.”
This story was originally published March 23, 2020 at 5:49 PM.
