Coach | 2025 Notre Dame WR Target Shaun Terry II "Epitome" Of What You Want

As Shaun Terry II‍ continues to explode on the national recruiting scene, many are realizing the 2025 Ohio receiver’s on-field talents.

But that’s not what Ironton High School assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Jerrod Pendleton mentions first about Terry.

“First and foremost, he's an excellent human being,” says Pendleton. “He's very, very special as far as how he carries himself, his body language. He's just a great young man.”

“He's a kid who cleans the locker room up after games. Everybody else is leaving, a lot of kids get out of there, they've been there all day. He's in there sweeping up the locker room. He's very good. He comes to a lot of the peewee events that the young kids play in on Saturday mornings after he played Friday night. You'll see Shaun at a lot of that stuff. He's just a great role model for these young kids in Southern Ohio who want to be like him and are striving to chase their dreams too. 

“He is the epitome of what you want as a football player and a person in the community.”

And, of course, when it comes to the on-field stuff, Pendleton has high praise as well.

“He is blessed,” the coach says. “He is a freak athlete. He can stop and start faster than anybody we've ever had. His change of direction; in one step, he's full speed. He could be running straight ahead and in one cut, he doesn't slow down and he's going another direction, full speed. He changes directions better than anybody we've ever had. 

“He bends, he's a really, really flexible kid. He bends not normal; when I say not normal, not like a normal human being. He's very flexible and he can contort and twist his body.”

Pendleton says Terry is a “natural runner.” 

“You can tell he's a kid who's played a lot of backyard football,” he continues. “He's a really good basketball player too. He has played a lot of backyard basketball and he understands the skill of being a runner. He has unbelievable vision, field awareness. He's one of those guys, it looks like there's nothing there and he finds the crease.”

Pendleton agrees with the description many have made that Terry is the kind of player who can make a defender miss in a phone booth.

“He is definitely that guy,” the coach says. “He's just really blessed with the change of direction. We've had a lot of good athletes and I've seen a lot of good athletes, but I've never seen one be able to go Point A to Point B and not in a straight line - back and forth - and still do it very fast.”

Terry started earning some big-time offers last fall from schools like Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Wisconsin and Auburn among others. He hit fire again last month, when he added Notre Dame, USC, Oregon, Tennessee and Kentucky to the mix.

He picked up his offer from the Irish when he was in South Bend for their Junior Day.

Pendleton sees Notre Dame as a “potential fit.”

“Absolutely,” he says. “We have a very good relationship with a lot of the staff members there at Notre Dame. We've all played in college, all of our staff. We know those guys and they've all recruited Ironton High School either at other schools or at Notre Dame. A lot of Ohio ties on that staff, so we know those guys very well. 

“Shaun's an academic-first kid. He's very bright, very smart. He loved the academic piece. Shaun liked the prestige and how it's special to be a football player at Notre Dame. You're looked at differently. It's Notre Dame.

“The prestige of Notre Dame. All the history…He studies up on all the history of all the programs and the players. He just likes that.”

Terry will take some more visits when the dead period is lifted next month, including one to Clemson, before starting to narrow his list down. 

He’s likely to return to South Bend and the Notre Dame staff is expected to be back at Ironton as well.

“He definitely wants to just keep building that relationship,” says Pendleton. “I know they're planning to come down this spring. They were going to try to make it here in the winter recruiting cycle and I don't know, schedules just couldn't work out getting here with the bad weather and stuff. 

“He said they're going to be here the first of spring and to sit down with Shaun. We might take him out on the field and run some routes and do that kind of stuff and let them eyeball him a little bit more and build that relationship.

“I know he has got a plan to make a decision this summer before going into the season. Notre Dame is very much squarely in the mix.”

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