Searching for the foot in football

When first-year Central football coach Rich Payne was searching for a kicker, he put the word out around school that he wanted someone from the soccer team to tryout.

Kyle Bader, a senior backup goalie and forward for the Central varsity soccer program, came out and won the job.

Payne said having a soccer player perform the kicking duties certainly is logical.

"The skill to kick the ball is something they learn from a very young age at that particular sport," Payne said. "And it's just evident of the way they can just kick the ball. Just the overall power. It doesn't matter if it's a round ball in soccer or an oval ball in football. It's the same basic concept."

Some high school coaches, such as Payne, have selected soccer players or former soccer players as their kickers.

Statistics show kicking is not a strong aspect of many local high school football teams.

The six local teams have attempted a total of just nine field goals in their combined 18 games so far in 2008.

Neither Chaffee nor Scott City has attempted a field goal. And only five of the nine attempts among the other four schools have been successful.

The six teams have gone for two-point conversions 29 percent of the time, and 28 percent of the extra-point attempts among the six teams hve failed so far this year.

Some local schools have had success with soccer kickers who share different views on proper kicking technique, whether to kick soccer style and the best kicking cleat to wear. But the kickers and local coaches all agree on the importance of having a strong kicker, especially in a tight ballgame, of which there have been plenty.

Six of 18 local games this year have been decided by eight points or fewer, including two games by one point.

Since 2004, the six local teams have been involved 10 games decided by one point, 25 games decided by three or fewer points and 53 games decided by seven or fewer points.

"A lot of games have been decided by [kicking]," Scott City coach Ronnie Jones said. "In fact, the game last week when Fredericktown beat Herculaneum, it was a 7-6 ballgame."

Bader is not the lone soccer player who kicks for a local football team.

Bader actually took over the kicking chores at Central from another soccer player, Tyler McNabb, who converted some long field goals, including a 40-yarder last fall.

Perryville senior kicker Ben Prevallet kicks for the Pirates football team and plays forward the Pirates soccer team. He is 2-for-3 in field goals, including hitting a 35-yarder.

St. Vincent coach Keith Winkler said Indians kicker Aaron Dzik played youth-league soccer. Dzik has kicked a 32-yard field goal and is 3-for-4 in PATs so far.

Bader has attempted just one field goal, a 51-yarder that went just wide right.

The Central kicker said the transition for him from kicking a soccer ball to kicking a football was a fairly simple because he basically applies the same technique he learned while playing soccer. He said he thinks soccer players have an advantage because of the strength they have built in their feet from the continious kicking involved in soccer. He said he has been the told the best leg exercise to improve as a football kicker is to just practice kicking.

Prevallet also said he thinks his ability to kick is because his foot has strengthened from playing soccer since he was 5 years old.

"Kicking a soccer ball, you have to get your foot more over the ball so it stays down and you've got to keep your body up over [the ball]," Prevallet said. "When you're kicking a football, you want to lean back almost, not too far, but you want to keep your foot straight and pointed up.

"When you get on the different fields, you've just got to switch your kicking style."

Prevallet, Bader, Dzik, Jackson's Morgan Johnson, and Chaffee's Collin Dannenmueller all kick soccer-style.

That means they kick with the inner-part of the their foot when attempting field goals, PATs or kicking off.

The other kicking method is to hit the ball straight on with the front of the foot. Chaffee's Chris Thomas and Alex Eichhorn both use a straight-on kicking style.

Bader said kicking soccer style was the obvious choice for him because he was taught in soccer never to kick with his toes.

"You don't want to kick the football with your laces," Bader said, discussing the soccer-style kick. "In soccer, you're taught that [kicking with the] laces is more power and less accuracy. And [kicking with] the inside of the foot in soccer is more accuracy than power. The inside of your foot is where you kick the football."

Bader said in football he must use the inside of his foot to generate not only accuracy but also power.

Payne said the primary adjustment for Bader and other soccer players is to not aim the football when kicking PATs and field goals and instead just kick straight through it.

One advantage to having a soccer kicker -- who only kicks and doesn't play another position -- is that the kicker can take advantage of special kicking footwear.

Bader wears his soccer cleats when he kicks the football. But other local kickers have to wear their football cleats because they play multiple positions and don't have the time to change their cleats, coaches said.

Kickers nowadays have three types of shoe options: socccer cleats, regular football cleats and squared-toe cleats used when kickers hit with the front of the foot.

"The traditional football shoe is probably not the shoe you want to be kicking with because it's not made for that," Payne said. "But if you look at the shoewear today, especially the shoewear that soccer kids wear, it's made to kick the ball with the in-sole of the foot. ... It's a much better fit on the foot. It's much tighter. "

With some inconsistency in the kicking game, some coaches said they must make decisions on when it's best to go for two-point conversions and when to kick the point after try.

"You've got to see what the varaibles are," Jones said. "A lot of times people don't realize that the weather makes a big deciding factor on what you do."

Chaffee coach Charlie Vickery said he might make his decision taking into account how his kickers have performed in practice that week or earlier in a game.

"If you've got a good consistent kicker, there's no reason why you can't have a really high percentage of extra points in high school," Vickery said.

Jones said a strong kicker would help a team vastly. He said some high schools are forced to attempt a fourth down play deep in their opponent's territory because of the lack of a kicker. With a strong kicker, however, they would not have to take that risk.

"I would think it would increased the odds of a team tremendously," Jones said. "To me any time you're capable of scoring, from the 40 [yard line] out, it's awful good."

Winkler said that with Dzik, who has three field goals, he believes the Indians can score at least three points whenever it is inside the 20.

And that's something not all teams are able to do.

"We can come away with three points and just not turn the ball over down there," Winkler said.