Oh Those Wacky, Nutty Kickers
September 02, 2009 03:06 PM | General
September 2, 2009
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Oh those wacky, nutty kickers – you are just never quite sure what you are going to get from them.
Bill Stewart was asked Tuesday what he expected from redshirt freshman Tyler Bitancurt, Western Washington transfer Josh Lider and senior Scott Kozlowski in the season opener on Saturday against Liberty. His honest-to-God answer was he didn’t know. Scouts honor.
“I hope they will be good, but I don’t know until I see them,” Stewart said.
That’s the problem with kickers. They can look great in an empty stadium and then on Saturday strange things begin to happen when the seats are full.
Don Nehlen remembered the first time he met walk-on kicker Paul Woodside in the fall of 1981. Woodside approached him with a card that read I stutter. Nehlen didn’t know what to think. Then he saw Woodside kick during fall camp, and then later during games, and he realized that he had a terrific kicker on his hands.
“I knew then that we had just had a great recruiting class,” Nehlen said.
Woodside kicked four field goals to help West Virginia defeat Florida in the 1981 Peach Bowl, and later became a two-time All-American in 1982 and 1983 with his trademark black and white checkered kicking shoe.
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| Record setting punter Todd Sauerbrun was initially miscast as a field goal kicker.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
One year, Nehlen had two outstanding kickers in the program at the same time - Mike Vanderjagt and Todd Sauerbrun. The only problem was he couldn’t figure out one from the other. Vanderjagt, the most accurate kicker in NFL history, began his WVU career shanking punts while Sauerbrun, an all-pro punter, started his Mountaineer career duck-hooking field goals.
Later, when Sauerbrun became the team’s established punter, he somehow got his hands on the telephone number to the press box so he could call after games to find out what his punting average was.
Oh those wacky, nutty kickers.
Sometimes coaches operate on hunches.
Such was the case in 1974. Defensive coordinator Chuck Klausing was also in charge of the kickers for Coach Bobby Bowden back then. Frank Nester, who tied an NCAA record for field goals in a game against Villanova in 1972, had graduated and West Virginia did not have a reliable replacement. So Klausing ran an open tryout during the spring.
One of the kickers that showed up was Bill McKenzie.
“When you are trying kids out you asked, ‘Did you kick off in high school?’ He says, ‘Yes.’ ‘What was your average kickoff?’ He tells me 20 yards. ‘Why only 20 yards?’ He says, ‘Well, my coaches made me put the ball flat and I squib kicked it every time,” Klausing said.
“‘Well, what was your record as a field goal kicker?’ ‘We never tried a field goal.’ ‘How were you at extra points?’ He said, ‘Three out of six.’”
A year later, McKenzie made the biggest pressure kick in WVU history to defeat Pitt 17-14 on the final play of the game.
Speaking of Nester, McKenzie once said that Nester used to paint an arrow on his kicking tee to get himself lined up properly with the goal post. Why? Nester couldn’t see three feet past his hands.
Sometimes, coaches’ hunches are not so good.
Klausing recalled once conducting an emergency tryout in 1972 when Nestor suffered a bruised thigh and was unable to kickoff against Penn State. He talked Bowden into letting him put an ad in the Daily Athenaeum.
“Big program like ours and we did not have a backup kicker,” Klausing said in 1995. “Bobby goes to me, ‘Chuck what are we gonna do?’ I said, ‘This is a big university, let’s advertise in the school newspaper that we’re gonna have a tryout and we’re gonna pick one or two place kickers to kick against Penn State.’”
Nearly 100 kids showed up for the tryout.
“We narrowed it down to two guys – one guy could kickoff pretty good. He was about 6-foot-6, skinny kid, looked more like a basketball player,” Klausing said. “The other kid looked like a pear. He was about 5-foot-10 and weighed about 240 pounds with a big pot belly. He could kick extra points. He was accurate, so we felt safe.”
The slender guy’s first kickoff against Penn State sailed right into the stands (back then kicks out of bounds were only a five-yard penalty). Now back at the 35, his second kick also landed out of bounds.
“I’m up in the press box and the guy in charge of coverages gets on the phones and he says, ‘Chuck, can he kick off?’ I said, ‘Don’t worry he can kick off.’
“He says to me again, ‘Chuck can he kick off?’ I said, ‘He’s coming right by you on the sidelines, put him on the phone and let me talk to him.’ So he gets on the phone and I tell him, ‘Hey, relax and kick the ball straight.’”
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| Mike Vanderjagt, the most accurate field goal kicker in NFL history, tried punting first at WVU.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
Just as he was about to kick a third time, a gust of wind picked up right behind him and the football sailed all the way to the end zone - a distance of more than 70 yards in the air. Klausing’s encouragement - and perhaps some divinity - had finally gotten the nervous kicker straightened out.
After the game, Klausing’s daughter asked her dad about his two discoveries. She was curious why he used them in the game.
“I said, ‘Well, they were the best we had because Nester was out with an injury,’” Klausing said. “She says, ‘Dad, I don't think they are students at West Virginia. They both work as bouncers at a local bar!”
Oh those wacky, nutty kickers.
You can be assured, though, that all three guys Stewart is planning on using this Saturday are on scholarship and don’t work in bars. And all indications point to them being pretty good kickers, too.
But just to be safe, Stewart said he’s not taking any chances. The practice plan this week called for live kicking yesterday and today.
“We want to see them during the week so it’s not a thrill a minute on Saturday,” Stewart laughed. “Put another quarter in the ride - that’s what everyone tells me.”
Oh those wacky, nutty kickers – you just never know what you’re going to get from them.
