Written by James Gensterblum, ’12
After three seasons on the field for the Hillsdale College football team, the importance of Shea Ruddy and Jacob Vance to the Chargers is easy to see.
The two juniors were named preseason All-Americans by D2Football.com entering the 2025 campaign and lived up to the hype for Hillsdale this season.
Vance, a redshirt junior linebacker, led the program in tackles for the third straight season and was named team MVP while earning repeat All-G-MAC honors. Ruddy, meanwhile, had a record-setting season as an offensive Swiss Army knife and return man that led to him being named a first team All-American by the Division II Conference Commissioners Association.
While both Ruddy and Vance are well known by Hillsdale fans and opposing coaches now, that wasn’t true coming out of high school. Both players were heavily underrated in the recruiting process, and few beyond Hillsdale saw their potential to be the elite players they are today.
As both Ruddy and Vance prepare to enter their final year of college football this fall, their journey to this point reflects their drive, self-belief, and hard work, plus Hillsdale’s acumen at identifying and developing underappreciated talent.
A Family Affair
Family played a major role in Ruddy and Vance first stepping onto the gridiron. The second of five brothers in the Ruddy family, Shea’s siblings provided him camaraderie and competition throughout his football journey.
“Some of my earliest memories are watching NFL games with my dad and my brothers,” Ruddy said. “After the games were over, we’d all go out in the front yard and play against each other, pretending we were our favorite players.
“That led to all of us playing tackle football together, starting in the third grade and continuing through high school. It’s been a huge part of our family’s life and still is.”
Vance, too, started his football career with his brother by his side.
“My older brother, Ethan, was a year ahead of me in football, so I wanted to join the team to play with him the following year,” Vance said. “It just became part of our family, the two of us on the football field together, all the way to high school.”
Ruddy was an elite quarterback in high school, leading his team to a 2022 Michigan state championship and rewriting his school’s record book while flashing the athleticism and versatility that would later make him a collegiate star.
The challenge for Ruddy as he looked to take his game to the next level was that his accomplishments came at Ottawa Lake Whiteford, a school with an enrollment of 262 in the smallest division of Michigan high school football.
“It can be tough to get coaches to take you seriously coming from a small school, because you’re not playing against the same kind of talent, and so, can you do what you’re doing against bigger and faster players?” Ruddy said. “A lot of coaches are not going to take the risk to find out.
“Also, I was late starting my recruiting process and getting out to camps, so a lot of schools had already finished up their classes by the time I was getting in front of them. Hillsdale was my only offer coming out of high school, and I feel blessed that the one school that wanted me was a perfect fit.”
Vance, meanwhile, went under the radar not because of school size—his high school, Birmingham Seaholm, was in the rugged Oakland Activities Association—but because injuries and the COVID-19 pandemic limited opportunities to showcase himself fully on the field and at camps. While those injuries hurt his development and evaluation, they did light a fire under Vance that helped fuel the player he is today.
“Sitting on the sideline helped me see the game a different way,” Vance said. “I saw more than just my position and thought about how I could be a leader in other ways than just what I was doing on the field. It was tough to go through at the time, but it made me appreciate the game and the opportunity I had more than I did before.”
Earning a Spot
Scouted at a senior camp, Vance chose Hillsdale over his only other offer. A raw player coming in due to those injuries, Vance redshirted in 2022 to spend the year getting stronger and learning the nuances of the game.
At the start of the 2023 fall camp, Vance was deep down on the team’s linebacker depth chart and wasn’t on the dress list to travel to away games. He appeared unlikely to see the field for the Chargers any time soon, but that didn’t change his mindset.
“You never want to see the field because the guy in front of you goes down, but at the same time, you never know what can happen,” Vance said. “My focus heading into that season was ‘if I get on the field, I am going to be ready to play my best, and I’m going to do everything I can to stay there.’”
Sure enough, the opportunity came, as a wave of injuries to linebackers shook up the depth chart and forced Vance into the starting lineup against rival Findlay in week four of the 2023 season. Vance was stellar against the always-tough Oilers, finishing with nine tackles in his first collegiate game, and that performance proved to be a springboard. By the end of the season, Vance was the team’s leading tackler, a feat he would repeat in 2024 and 2025. His performance and leadership earned the respect of his teammates as he was selected to be the team captain as a junior in 2025.
Emerging Stars
Ruddy arrived in 2023, a year after Vance, and his obvious athletic gifts saw him earn a spot on the field as a true freshman. That didn’t mean it was an easy adjustment.
“I moved to wide receiver in college, and I had never played the position before. The summer before I arrived was one of the hardest of my life, trying to cram years of knowledge and reps at the position into three months,” Ruddy said. “I was lucky to have great coaching and great mentorship from teammates when I got here, and I was able to find a few things I could do well to help the team.”
Hillsdale’s bet on Ruddy paid off immediately, as he produced eight touchdowns as a receiver and runner in his first season, but it was in his sophomore year that he really took off. Not only did Ruddy become the team’s leading receiver, but he also expanded his repertoire to include kick returns and became one of the best in the nation, using his acceleration, speed, and spatial awareness to score multiple return touchdowns. Ruddy was named an honorable mention All-American as a returner after 2024. He was even better in 2025 as a junior, leading all levels of college football in kickoff return yardage with 960 and breaking Chargers career records for kick return yardage and touchdowns that have stood since 2005.
Both Vance and Ruddy have developed on the field as football players, but Hillsdale has helped both grow in other critical ways.
“I was a raw, unheralded recruit coming to Hillsdale, and I’ve been lucky to be surrounded by the best possible people from the moment I’ve set foot on campus,” Vance said. “Coach Deck [linebackers coach Riley Deckard] has done so much to help me develop as a player, but it’s the man he is off the field that’s really inspired me to become a better person.
“All the older guys—Kyle Kudla, Jake Maloney, and so many others—they showed me what it meant to live your life and do everything at an elite level. Who I am as a player comes from those guys, and what I’m trying to do now is pay that forward to the guys who are coming up behind me.”
Ruddy pointed to Hillsdale’s academic reputation as a game-changer for him.
“I got good grades in high school, but academics weren’t a priority for me in the same way football was,” Ruddy said. “Being at Hillsdale has completely changed my perspective.
“Having access to amazing professors and being in classes and on teams with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met has given me an appreciation for the opportunities I have in my own life. It’s pushed me to be the best I can be in the classroom as well.”
From humble beginnings, Ruddy and Vance have achieved tremendous success as individuals at Hillsdale, but for their final season in 2026, both players have just one goal in mind—to bring home the team’s first championship since 2018.
“We’ve been close to contending for a title the last couple of years, but we’ve come up short,” Ruddy said. “With the team we have coming back, we have all the pieces in place to play championship-level football and win titles in 2026.”
James Gensterblum is the Director of Athletic Communications at Hillsdale College.
A 2012 graduate of Hillsdale College, James worked in print journalism as a sportswriter and editor in Michigan and Indiana for eight years prior to returning to Hillsdale, winning numerous awards for sportswriting and photography from the Michigan Press Association and the Associated Press.
Reposted from the spring 2026 issue of Arete.
