There are maybe 3 or 4 kickers who have been juniors and got an offer from a college before summer going into their senior year. 99.997% of the rest of us mere mortals need to adhere to a different timeline (and reality).

While I’m not a fan of pressuring kids to specialize early, the only advantage you can really give yourself is an early start. If you have a kid or you are a kicker who got bit by the kicking bug earlier, great, so long as it is kid driven not parent driven.

I’ve actually never seen it end well when the parent wanted college football for their kid more than the kid did.

Middle School - 10th Grade Winter

Too many kids don’t play enough sports. The best kickers are the best athletes, period. You should be playing multiple sports, multiple positions within those sports, and, big one here, having FUN.

Like baseball I’ve seen a lot of promising young kickers burn out because they hyperspecialized too fast in kicking physically and mentally. Sometimes this is from nutty parents, but a lot of times the kids fall into the Twitter trap of thinking they need to get an offer by the time they are 14 or they are somehow failures.

Screw that. Kick. Have fun. Play lots of sports.

(Eli pictured right might be a bit advanced for most Middle School kids, but overwhelmingly the tone of training is fun first, fundamentals seconds and then everything else after that)

https://twitter.com/brendancahill_/status/1599076236331843589?s=20&t=M_WhHaiPEgtQzRdPPQoltQ

10th Grade Winter - Winter Junior

Focus on lifting, maximizing technique and using the summer going into sophomore year as a litmus test for what schools you like or don’t. I would try 2-3 big schools, 2-3 medium range schools and 2-3 safety schools of college camps to attend.

https://twitter.com/PrincetonFTBL/status/1611472620444332033?s=20&t=M_WhHaiPEgtQzRdPPQoltQ

https://www.elifootballcamps.com/

College coaches can’t openly talk to you until after 9/1 of your junior year.

The only way around that is to either attend college run recruiting camps or have your HS coach or private coach speak as your intermediary with college coaches.

You can find most of these college camps on teams’ various twitter accounts or their football sports website (like the one on the left here)

Some will be a one day kicking camp, others will workout kickers any day they have kickers.

FBS programs have all their camps in June, FCS and everyone else is in July. (If you’re in Northeast, June camps are going to happen during your finals so you need to work on getting an excused absence for a college visit)

Since most schools won’t be looking at kickers until winter of your junior year in earnest, I’d ease off the gas on trying to talk to college coaches too early. It is possible to become a pest.

If there is a time to “hit the gas” it is right after your sophomore season. This is when you hit the “we have time, but we have no time to waste” point.

Effectively, 80% of college recruiting boards are solidified by the end of junior summer going into senior year. While your senior tape can help, its role is still somewhat vague in determining the outcome of offers or no offers.

“Getting On The Radar”

There are three ways you get on a coach’s radar:

• Fill out their recruiting questionnaire which is on their website under “recruiting”
• Email college coaches and then find/follow/DM on Twitter the same coaches the same message (more on exactly what to say next chapter)
• Have a coach who knows the college coaches refer you their way (this is how nearly all of FBS recruiting works)
  • You may need to pay the piper here, by going to different coaches in regions of the country with relationships with colleges you are interested in.
  • Coaches can be vague about their connections, but remember, their business model rests on their ability to associate their players with famous college brands. If you’ve got the goods, it shouldn’t be hard to get them to look your way.

That’s it.

Slotting Interest

As coaches begin to get back to you, you can start to sort them into various interest levels:

• Cold Schools - Nothing back from them.
• Luke Warm Schools - Indirect communication via Twitter DM/Email that occurs without schedule and randomly (this usually means you are mid to bottom of coach’s list)