Kicking A Football

Kicking is something I’ve done ALL my life.  This is probably the case with many field goal kickers and punters. Even though I wasn’t always kicking a football, I was at least kicking A ball.

My kicking experience started with a soccer ball (European football that is for you terminology technicians).

I only share this story because so many kids who start kicking a football may be doing so for any number of reasons. Once most start though, they’re in.

Unlike many of the kids who play sports today, I only played one growing up until the age of twelve. I didn’t try baseball or basketball as my son has. It was all soccer, all the time.

It wasn’t that I loved the sport starting out, it was simply a social outlet. My friends all played oddly enough, which in the 1970’s in Kennesaw, Georgia, still makes me cock my head a bit.

In any case, I grew to love the sport, the running and the kicking. It felt great to be involved in an active sport, getting exercise and learning how to control a ball the way we did without the use of our hands.

I think that to this day, even kicking a football now there is some reward in the challenge of control of that ball off the foot that I loved back in my soccer days.

Playing year after year with the same guys was comfortable. It felt like I was in a world that would never end, even when it was obvious that we were all growing older.

I went to soccer camps at Clemson, to professional soccer games to see the Atlanta Chiefs, all with the same group of people. I was also getting better at soccer.

One summer I clearly remember ‘suddenly’ being faster than several of the teammates I could have never outrun in the past!

Then came ‘the move’, and everything changed.

Kicking A Football Is Just Different

The summer I turned 12 and started into my seventh grade at the ‘new school’, I did so only knowing a handful of kids on my new street.

As the bell rang that first school morning and they each headed their own way for class I realized I didn’t know anyone at all!

I know that military brats have no sympathy, but for a kid who had been with the same people, the same school system, the same house all these years, it was a big change.

All I could think about was that I couldn’t wait to meet the soccer crowd. At least I would ‘fit in’ quicker at the new school.

Within a day or so of ‘settling in’ I found out that there was NO SOCCER team in my new school and wouldn’t be until I reached the city high school. However, that was still TWO years away!

So, I continued to play soccer with my buddies a half hour away from my old school.

Needless to say I finished my 7th grade school year with next to no ‘new’ friends aside from a few that were nice but didn’t have much in common (they didn’t play soccer).

At the suggestion of this kid on my street, I decided I would try to kick off for the 8th grade football team.

It was a great idea because I didn’t necessarily want to play football, I did want to get involved with the most popular sport at the new school!

I had several months to practice, but had no clue where to start and no one to ask (no kicking lessons to be found) about kicking a football.  Back then, there just wasn’t a practical place to find field goal kicking tips as there is today!

Still, if I ever had any chance to fully make this transition I had to try this ‘kicking a football‘ thing.

A few days later my father drove me to the practice field at the high school, and I kicked my first football, ever.

We’d bought a tee from a local sports store, a red ‘side-winder’ because that’s what the guy recommended for these ‘soccer-style’ kickers at that time.

I remember reading the directions on the package, trying to figure out how the ball was supposed to sit on the tee, how it was supposed to lean, how far back I was supposed to stand…..absolutely clueless!

I quickly learned that though I could get used to kicking a football (a much different shape) over time (and not sure how much time at that point), doing it with any consistency was an entirely different story.

Now, I’ll pause here for a moment because I’m sure that many of you might be at this ‘place’ in my story.

I frankly wasn’t sure I could kick this oddly shaped ball as far as I needed to or to the right spot on the field!

In fact, kicking field goals wasn’t yet on my radar, the initial focus was just learning how to kick off for the team and figuring out how to use that Sidewinder tee effectively.

Over time I came to appreciate the odd shape of the football. Unlike the perfectly round soccer ball I had kicked all my life, I quickly found that a football’s oblong shape produced a number of very strange, wobbly rotations if I wasn’t precise with how my foot struck the ball each time.

A well struck ball would rotate ‘cleanly’ and go much further than the wobbly looking ‘duck’ I was able to produce. Also the lower I seemed to kick the ball, the faster it would spin and the shorter the kick would go.

Too low and my foot would actually send the tee bouncing down the field and the ball not much further. Hitting the ball too high with my foot sent it straight across the ground in a low and unpredictable path.

Kicking a football just a few times taught me quickly that there were several ways I could swipe at it and produce undesirable results.

Without knowing what it was called at that point, I had found that there was one general area on the ball that sent it flying down field the right way, there was one SWEET spot!

Knowing this and doing it were two separate things. I was exited about the challenge with each kick, but I also knew I was on my own with very little time to figure this all out before I had to try it in front of a whole bunch of coaches, teammates and fans. That was terrifying!

We know that there are young kickers starting this same journey each and every year. Kicking a football for them is a new and exciting experience, but a little scary at the same time.

We know that kicking a football can be a lonely experience for most young kickers and that they don’t often feel like they are part of the team.

We set out to change that with this website. When you join this site you are part of a team, a team of kickers past and present who can share experiences, tips, tricks, answer questions, and get to know you.

So be part of something bigger than yourself today…kicking a football doesn’t have to be a lonely and depressing experience.

Join the FGK a team today and happy kicking!!