Randy Walker blows the whistle and yells “Five minutes!” at the end of Tuesday’s practice, and every position group disperses into its individual drill station.
A frenzy of action ensues. The running backs tear through dummy pads; the defensive line runs sprints.
And if you’re looking closely, you might notice a clan of about a half dozen slink in from the secluded field behind the softball diamond to rejoin the rest of the team.
In fact, the same pack is easy to overlook in games as well. They hop off the exercise bike periodically, shuttle onto the field, kick the football, then run off. If they do their jobs correctly, they are largely ignored. Should they miss a field goal — as has been the case in NU’s last five attempts — or botch a punt, they become a “serious concern.”
NU’s primary kickers are senior David Wasielewski and sophomore Brian Huffman. Wasielewski, better known as “Waz” — the group’s de facto spokesman — is the one people blame when a field goal goes astray, while “Huff” takes the heat when kickoffs and punts are too long/short/high/low/
straight/wide. Two freshmen, Joel Howells and Slade Larscheid, are in the middle of redshirt seasons, and former NU soccer goalie Ryan Pederson is a punter on the roster.
All five agree that thanklessness is to be expected in their jobs.
“Growing up you know that,” Wasielewski says. “If you want to be a kicker, that comes with the territory.”
Another thing that comes with the territory (that domain being an isolated practice field) is a large measure of independence from coaches and the other players. While the kickers are just like every other member of the Cats’ squad in meetings and conditioning drills, they spend the bulk of every practice unsupervised, practicing their specialty over and over.
“Our job is basically the same every game,” Huffman says. “I mean, you go out there and kick the ball. What else can you really practice?”
Like most college football programs, NU does not have a coach who works exclusively on the kicking game. Walker, who played running back in college, meets with the kickers every day and designs their personal workouts. But the kickers say most of their coaching comes from one another.
“Coach Walker (oversees us) but he even says he doesn’t know much about kicking,” Huffman says. “He does a lot of golf analogies.”
Most of the kickers have attended camps and worked with professional players and coaches, so they “know what it’s supposed to look like.”
“If I miss a kick, Brian is there trying to tell me, ‘You did this wrong, work on this,'” Wasielewski says. “If he’s got a bad punt, I try to help coach him. We don’t let each other get down.”
The kickers’ practice peaks at the beginning, as the Cats open every workout with 5-10 minutes of work with the kickoff returners, snappers and holders.
“Then we just try to find an open field and go somewhere that we can be out of the way,” Wasielewski says.
From this point on, their practice resembles a shoot-around more than a vigorous workout. Among the frequently viewed activities: Kicking footballs back and forth; throwing footballs back and forth (Larscheid was a quarterback in high school); and doing a drill where they walk in a straight line, dropping and retrieving the ball.
“It’s hard to stay busy because there’s only so much you can kick,” Wasielewski says. “You can’t go out there and kick for two hours straight. Your leg wouldn’t fall off, but it would hurt.”
So between the lack of supervision and activities to fill the time, can the kickers just do as they please?
“They probably wouldn’t know, but with our luck they’d have a spy over there looking at us,” Huffman says. “The minute we stop, we get caught. Then we become runners instead of kickers.”
Apparently this was a lesson learned early in the season, when Walker peeked over at the side field and didn’t see too many footballs flying through the uprights.
“We had a little reminder session earlier this season because I didn’t like what (their practice) looked like,” Walker says. “I don’t want to look over and see a bunch of Chuckles the Clown going on over there.”
When it comes to conditioning, the kickers are all business — and in each other’s business, too. They are on the same offseason running and weightlifting regimen as the linebackers, and occasionally the defensive backs and receivers. Additionally, they work independently on flexibility and plyometrics.
Larscheid is happy to brag about his teammate’s strengths, even if they’re too modest or embarrassed to do so themselves.
“Waz is one of the strongest guys on the team,” the freshman says. “And Huff can do the splits. He won’t say it, but he can.”
Figurative flexibility comes in handy as well, as kickers often have to work with botched snaps and holds.
“If the snappers mess it up, it’s pretty much evident who it is,” Wasielewski says. “If I miss a kick, I don’t know if it was (the holder’s) fault or my fault, but I generally take the blame for it. Sometimes with holders, if you tell them they’re doing poorly, they’ll do it even worse.”
Quarterback Brett Basanez and wide receiver Kunle Patrick have handled holding responsibilities most of the year, and freshman Sean Mansfield, who came in as a tight end, has served exclusively as a long snapper this season.
Basanez says the holders try to be as accommodating as possible, and Mansfield’s “grip it and rip it” mantra is all about keeping things stable for the kickers.
After all, someone’s got to look out for them.
