Specialist Path' Handling Pressure

This weekend I was able to relax and watch football games all weekend. As I watched both the college and NFL games I saw kickers having trouble making pressure kicks.

Pressure is something that is perceived but can be very real if you allow it to affect your emotions and your mechanics in kicking. On Saturday I watched some struggles from the college kickers but there were also similar struggles that decided games in the NFL.

This is "On A Specialists' Path"-Handling Pressure.

Being a former Tennessee player and lifelong fan, I watched the UAB vs. Tennessee game this weekend and saw UAB kicker Josh Zahn miss his first five goals of the game. I have seen kickers have trouble before but nothing like this game.

The UAB kicker missed a 41 yard field goal early in the game and then missed a 35 yard goal in the second quarter. As I watched on television, they did a close up of the kicker and he was alone on the bench with his head in his hands. He proceeded to miss kicks of 49, 30, and 54 in regulation.

My biggest issue with the kicker was not that he was upset with missing the kicks but it was his overall body language. He looked like he did not want to attempt another kick.

I learned early in my career that you must embrace the pressure and want another opportunity if you want to be successful as a kicker. It becomes a fight or flight mentality and as a kicker you have no place to hide!

Kicking is a pressure packed position and I have been in that position numerous times, but from my work in Sport Psychology I always tried to implement the "5 minute rule". Basically this is the idea that whatever happens in a game, good or bad, you have the ability to process it for 5 minutes and then it is time to move to the next kick.

One of the toughest challenges for a kicker is that there are so few chances in a game and rarely do you get the chance to make up for your mistakes. It is important to always focus on the "process" in kicking rather than the "outcome".

A person's self worth should not be decided by what happens on the field. People who have never kicked a pressure kick before can understand the analogy of a golfer on the tee box.

When a golfer has a bad tee shot it is important not to let the next tee shot be affected by the previous shot. This is where it is important to trust your technique well enough that you go into the next shot or kick with a clear mind and continue to be fluid.

Garrett Hartley and Sebastian Janikowski are two of the best kickers in the world and both of them had trouble under pressure on Sunday.

Even the best kickers will occasionally have trouble under pressure and one factor that can attribute to this is simply rushing the moment. As a kicker it is important not to rush the kick and to embrace the moment. Be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

When I was a freshman in college I took a public speaking class. One of the first things they tell you in the class is that it is normal to feel nervous before a speech. This theory can also apply to being a kicking specialist.

My suggestion for any kicker would be to process a missed field goal and keep your head held high after a miss. Everyone makes mistakes but the true sign of character is in times of adversity.

Embrace the moment and understand that there is not a bigger rush than kicking under pressure. If you embrace the pressure than you can learn to enjoy it and in my case you can even miss it!

Visit: www.jameswilhoitkickingcoach.com

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Specialist's Path Stephen Stansell

As I traveled across the state of Tennessee this Summer doing kicking lessons, I worked with the majority of the top college and high school kickers in the state of Tennessee. As I worked with talented kickers at places like MTSU and Carson Newman I began to wonder who was the best kicker that currently kicks in the state of Tennessee? Outside of Rob Bironas, you can make the argument that Austin Peay kicker Stephen Stansell should be at the top of that list.

Stephen has always been a talented kicker but he really seems to be hitting his stride this year. He was just recently named Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Week for this 4 field goal performance against Tennessee State University.

In this blog you will learn how Stephen became interested in kicking and how he decided on Austin Peay State University.

This is Stephen Stansell On ‘A Specialists Path’.

Like most kickers Stephen started becoming interested in kicking after starting out in soccer.

“I have played soccer since I was four years old and always naturally had a strong leg”, Stephen said. “I decided I wanted to kick my eighth grade year. My brother was playing for the high school that I would be playing at and his best friend was the kicker at the time and was graduating. Jared Price was the kicker and I have always wanted to follow his footsteps so I decided I wanted to be a kicker like him.”

Stephen played high school ball at McMinn County, which has had a great history of talented kicking specialists including former Georgia kicker Andy Bailey and now current junior punter Conar Roberts. The kicking history at his school along with many other factors has led to his success as a kicker.

“My biggest influences were first of all my family”, Stephen said. “They always supported me. They took me to camps and took me to work with kicking coaches and they never missed any of my games. This is not only my parents, but my brother, aunts and uncles, and my grandparents. So they were always a positive influence on me.”

“Andy Bailey was another influence I had”, Stephen said. “Andy kicked at my high school and received a full ride scholarship to the University of Georgia. He would occasionally come back to the high school and work with the kickers and give us some advice.”
Stephen went to numerous camps in high school and worked with a few kicking coaches including Marc Feuerbach from Georgia. He credits Marc for much of his kicking development in high school along with helping him as a mentor. Marc is now a high school principal in Georgia.

“Marc Feuerbach was the kicking coach I worked with me junior and senior year of high school”, Stephen said. “He helped me get to where I am from the football aspect and the spiritual aspect.”

Stephen has also had other mentors that have helped lead him on his path.

“Another huge influence on me was Brad Bennett”, Stephen said.” “Brad was a football coach at my high school and a gym teacher. I would talk to him everyday because he was my coach and my teacher. He changed my whole life around spiritually. He was a strong mentor to me and still to this day is. Without him I doubt my life would be how it is today.”

Stephen was an All Conference player for four years at McMinn County but he still went fairly unnoticed in the recruiting process. I became aware of him after some people were talking about his performance in upsetting top ranked Dobyns-Bennett in the first round of the 2008 playoffs. Even with his high school success, the major Division 1 offers just didn’t seem to materialize for him.

“The recruiting process was a different experience for me”, Stephen said.” “I didn’t know the steps on how to get recruited or what I needed to do. I made a lot of highlight DVDs and sent them out to many different coaches. I never heard any feedback from any schools except Austin Peay.”

This is not uncommon for kickers and punters to go unnoticed as that is the last position that most football coaches will recruit and offer scholarships.

“I was open to any school if it was division 1 because I thought I could play Division 1 ball”, Stephen said.” “The only thing I knew to do was to pray about it and trust that God would lead me to the school he had planned for my future.”

“So by December Austin Peay was still the only school I had talked to so I committed”, Stephen said. “Signing day was in February and I signed on a Wednesday. Exactly one week before I signed I received many phone calls from the University of Memphis coach and he was talking to me about being a kick off guy and compete for that job. Along with Memphis, University of Nevada called my kicking coach and was interested. A little bit of contact was made with Georgia also, but all of these schools wanted me as a walk on kick off guy. So I continued to pray about it and I knew Austin Peay was the place I was being led to go so I signed with APSU on signing day in 2009.”

Stephen had solid freshman year at Austin Peay making 9 of 15 field goals and added four touchbacks last year but he was not completely satisfied with his performance because he has aspirations to make the NFL.

After this past season Stephen and I began to work together. He booked lessons in Chattanooga with me in June and once I saw him kick I knew that he had serious talent. What I also knew though was that he needed a lot of work to reach his potential.

He had some issues with his kicking mechanics which had led to some injuries last season and they also were leading to some inconsistencies. Stephen was already very talented but what I was most impressed with was how willing he was to learn and improve. He came to me with an open mind and was determined to be the best. We did 5 lessons over the Summer and I could see improvement after each lesson.

The final lesson I conducted with him was over at Austin Peay and we worked on game-like situations to prepare him for the season. His hard work and dedication has certainly paid off as he is 7 of 8 on field goals and already has 5 touchbacks on the season! His only miss was a 46 yard goal last week against MTSU.

Stephen has had great success so far this year but that is certainly not going to his head.

“My goals for kicking is to first of all have fun all the time and never get to the point where kicking is no longer fun for me”, Stephen said. “I plan to help my team in every way possible and make us as a team better. I plan to use my ability to kick to glorify God and nothing else. My dream is to kick in the NFL and this is what I will try to do if given the opportunity. I plan on being the best kicker that I can physically and mentally be.”

Stephen is certainly on the right track to get an opportunity for the NFL and if he is not the best kicker in the state of Tennessee right now than he certainly has a great shot to be over the next two and half years of his college career!

Visit: www.jameswilhoitkickingcoach.com

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Specialists Path-Drew Butler

How does the only kicker in the College Football Hall of Fame have a son that becomes the best college punter in the country?

Drew Butler’s path should have led him to be the next great kicker at the University of Georgia, but instead he exploded onto the College Football world last year by winning the Ray Guy Award for the nation’s best punter.

Drew’s father, Kevin, was a star field goal kicker at the University of Georgia and had a successful career for the Chicago Bears and Arizona Cardinals. During Kevin’s time with the Bears, head coach Mike Ditka hired a kicking consultant named Gary Zauner to help the Bears’ kicking specialists. Kevin didn’t know this at the time but a mere 25 years later he would hire Coach Zauner to train his son as a punter.

As Coach Zauner’s assistant since January of 2009 I was able to see Coach Zauner train College and NFL Free Agent Kicking Specialists and take them to a different level. His transformation of Drew Butler was one I saw firsthand and I believe to be one of his most impressive coaching jobs.

This is Drew Butler On a Specialists Path.

Drew was exposed to the kicking game at a young age with his father being in the NFL, which sparked some interest in the kicking.

“Growing up with my dad playing professional football as a kicker, I was always with him when he was practicing and had natural ability, you could say”, Drew said.

“I learned solid fundamentals and technique from him at a young age, and it translated well when I decided to play in high school.”

Even with having a famous father as a kicker, Drew actually was more interested in other sports growing up and I got a late start as a kicking specialist.

“I first decided to be a kicker and punter the summer before my sophomore year in high school”, Drew said. “I was a golfer and soccer player before I played football, and we were a brand new high school.”

“In our first year, the team had lost a few games due to missed extra points and short field goals. That’s when I decided that I could help the team because I could always make an extra point. From that point, one thing led to another, and here I am today.”

Drew didn’t always dream of living up to his father’s legacy and actually wanted to make his living in another professional sport.

“Playing in high school, I just wanted to help my team win games”, Drew said. “I didn’t really have a vision. I wanted to be a professional golfer.”

Like most kicking specialists', Drew started to see some success and that’s when he really started to sharpen his craft. During this process he discovered that he was more of a natural punter than kicker.

“As I got older, along with our entire football team, we started getting better and winning games”, Drew said.” After my junior year I started receiving college interest. That’s when it hit me that I could have a future punting a football, and I loved that idea. So I really bought into punting, and dedicated myself to playing in college."

After reaching his goals in high school, he received a scholarship to punt at the University of Georgia, which he described as “a dream come true”.

Drew’s road was not always a straight one as he didn’t make a smooth transition from college and wasn’t able to see the field right away.

“The toughest moment I have had was not playing my first two years in college”, Drew said.” I lost the competition to start my freshman year to Brian Mimbs, a great punter for UGA and still a good friend of mine.”

“I learned a lot about myself and about the game being able to watch Brian perform for two seasons, but it was not easy. I doubted myself and my ability, I was not performing consistently, and I was not proving to the coaching staff that I could be the next guy in line.”
“I had to re assess my goals and really focus on what I wanted to accomplish while I was at Georgia. That is how I responded to my adversity.”

After the 2008 season Brian Mimbs was set to graduate and the punting job was wide open for Drew, but he was still unsure of himself and his ability. This is when his father saw that Coach Zauner was giving private kicking and punting lessons out in Arizona. So in the winter of 2008 he decided it would be a great idea to get an extra set of eyes on Drew and have him come out to Arizona for private lessons.

I was assisting Coach Zauner with his video and his combines during the time Drew came to Arizona and I was able to witness the private lessons. During the lessons I watched him really learn the proper technique through the on the field coaching and especially the video review. Check out more on Coach Zauner and see Kevin Butler's workout on Coach Zauner's website http://www.coachzauner.com/ .

He had some mechanical issues that were costing him consistency and distance. After three days Drew left Arizona with a good sense of what he needed to work on. Understanding the technique is one thing but making the technique become natural through repetition is another.

Over the next 4 or 5 months Drew went home and worked on the drills so that he could continue to improve. After performing well during Spring Practice, Drew came to Coach Zauner’s Pro Development Camp in Minnesota. He entered the 2009 season confident after all the hard work he had done over the offseason.

Drew had a fantastic season that ended in winning the Ray Guy, but even after all his success he is mature enough to attribute most of his accolades to his punting unit and not just himself.
“My proudest moment of my career so far is being a part of the number 1 punt team in the nation last year”, Drew said. “Each and every week we dedicated ourselves to being the best we could be and it really paid off. We led the nation in net and gross punting, which was a huge testament to each guy on the unit.”

Drew knows that it will be tough to deal with the expectations of being the Ray Guy Award winner as a sophomore, but he has already had to deal with the expectations of being the son of Kevin Butler.

“Being able to have the opportunity to live up to the expectation of being my Dad’s son has been an honor”, Drew said. “My Dad is my dad, and I can’t change that. I don’t want to change that. I love him and he is my best friend.”

“I embrace the challenge and work hard with that in mind because I know that if I accomplish half of the things he did, I will be in good shape. He has helped me tremendously and I am really fortunate to have him in my life.”

Drew is already on track to live up to his father’s legacy at Georgia and if he keeps this pace up than maybe his father’s former NFL team, the Bears, might be looking for a punter in a few years as Brad Maynard is 36 years old and is entering his 14th season in the NFL.
For right now though Drew is just focused on this year at Georgia.

“My goals for this season are more specific and fine tuned than 2009”, Drew said.” “Having the year that our punt team had last year, most would think it would be hard to reassess our goals; but after reviewing what we can get better at, there is still a lot of work to do.”

“My goal is to be consistent and perform so the coaches can depend on me. I want to be the leader of Georgia’s special teams and our punt team. I want to be a valuable weapon for the defense, give our coverage team great opportunities to makes plays and limit return yards, and not allow our punt team to take a step backwards from last year. We need to keep moving forward. If we achieve all of our goals, we will.”

After getting to know Drew and seeing his progress over the past year I am just as impressed with his maturity as I am his talent. If anyone could repeat winning the Ray Guy Award I think he is the right “guy” for the job!

Visit: www.jameswilhoitkickingcoach.com

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Specialists Path- Discovering Fact

When I started my On A Specialists Path Blog almost four months ago I did so to try and help kicking specialists on their path as an NFL, College, or High School specialist.

I have been to all levels of football as a kicker on the field of play and now I continue to learn even more coaching punters and kickers. One of the things I have learned over the years is that sometimes in life you can have certain expectations and you can discover that the facts are very different than what you expected.

Last week's On A Specialists Path Blog was about using the proper footballs. I suggested that the University of Tennessee was using a football that was putting them at a competitive disadvantage.

Over the past week I have had over 3,000 people read my blog about using the proper footballs. On Monday afternoon I was also asked by Dave Hooker and Terry Fair to join them on their radio show on 100.3 WNOX in Knoxville.

During that interview I explained in detail why I thought that the University of Tennessee was using inferior equipment. Dave Hooker was intrigued during the interview while Terry Fair was still a little bit skeptical and so Terry challenged me to demonstrate the difference in the footballs this past Friday when I was in Knoxville.

I spoke with Dave later in the week to iron out the details and I was told that Terry had organized for us to go over to the University of Tennessee Indoor Facility to test out the balls. I hadn't kicked in an organized workout in about a year so I had to go in my basement and start to search for my kicking shoes!

I made the trip on Friday morning to the University of Tennessee to test out the difference between a Wilson GST football and a Nike Aero Elite football. As I got to the facility I met up with Terry Fair (pictured below) and a few other staff members from WNOX. As I was getting ready to warm up we were approached by a senior official at the university and told that we needed permission to be on the field.

Tennessee has changed their policy toward former letterman now as their are more guidelines as to who can use the facility. There was obviously some sort of mix up but I figured that with Terry being a former NFL star and with me being the 2nd all time leading scorer in school history we would could get a little courtesy.

We were finally told it was ok for us to use the field and so I continued to get warmed up to test out these two footballs. I was about twenty minutes into my warmup and just about to really test out the balls when that same university official told me I had to quit kicking.

It was certainly interesting timing as I had just unwrapped the brand new Nike and Wilson footballs...

Well as my former kicking coach, Coach Zauner, likes to say I had to "improvise and adjust" and that's exactly what I did. We went over to a local high school and proceeded to test out the footballs. The workout can be seen on the web as I just posted it to my YouTube channel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXoITAcU2H0

I started the workout by kicking 50 yard field goals and worked my way back to 60 yards. As I was kicking both the Nike and Wilson footballs I made it a point to really concentrate when I kicked the Wilson footballs so that no one thought I was favoring the Nike ball.

The reason I titled this blog "Discovering Fact" is because my goal is to help kicking specialists discover what are the real facts. During the workout I learned as much about myself as I did about the footballs.

I learned that there is just a slight difference in the sweet spot of both the Nike and the Wilson footballs with the Nike having a larger surface to kick. A good example is how golfers will favor some golf balls compared to others because the sweet spot is a little bigger.

I firmly believe that if both teams had switched footballs last year in the Tennessee vs Alabama game than the outcome would have been different.

Daniel Lincoln missed a field goal at the end of the half that came up a yard short with a brand new Wilson GST football, which I believe he would have made with a Nike football. In that same game Leigh Tiffin was able to miss the sweet spot on two longer field goals, but was still able to make the kicks because of how much bigger the surface area is on the Nike football.

The main point that should be taken from this exercise is that there should be one standardized football in College Football. I still can't understand why there isn't one football and if the NCAA wants to talk about fair play then they certainly should use one football for both teams.

What I will take away from this experience is that I know I still have the talent to compete for an NFL roster spot. Every kicking specialists' path is different and I will always have a passion for coaching kicking specialists, but it certainly has me intrigued to see what I could do if I actually kicked more than once a year!

Visit: http://www.jameswilhoitkickingcoach.com/

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