On Wednesday and Thursday Arrick Blevins (Sullivan North) got some One on One Instruction for his kicking. Arrick contacted me about a week ago about getting some lessons and I happened to be going to Kingsport, TN for a wedding and was staying 5 minutes from his high school. Sometimes timing is everything and this was one of those times. I have to give an assist to Coach Zauner as he helped direct Arrick to me for lessons.Arrick is a rising senior and wanted to work with me to improve his fundamentals and be ready for a big senior year. He was the starting kicker this past year and handled both the field goals and kickoffs.
I could see right away that Arrick had a strong leg but he wasn't using it to his full capabilities. Arrick told me that he grew up watching me kick while I was at Tennessee and I believe he was a little nervous the first day. He had a tendency to really come at the ball hard on his kicks and it seemed like he was trying to kick 60 yard field goals on every kick. I worked on his tempo to the ball and also his follow through. Also, as you can see in the picture (above) Arrick was having trouble with his foot position. I tried to get him to open his foot up a bit more to get better contact on the ball.
Next, I started working on kickoffs with Arrick. Just like his field goals, Arrick needed to work on his tempo to the ball. I got him to slow down and he was able to kick the ball much farther. It is not always about hitting the ball harder, it is about hitting the ball more efficiently. Arrick really started to improve once he started to buy into that concept.It was great working with Arrick. I was impressed with his hard work and it was great to see him really improve by the end of the second day. If he continues to work on the drills and techniques that I showed him I am sure he will improve dramatically!
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