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PrintKicking It Up A Notch
When Brooks Rossman was growing up in San Diego, he had the luxury of living around several kickers and punters with plentiful NFL experience.
Michael Husted, who spent most of his career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has been a mentor to him, as has John Carney, who just retired after 22 seasons and played for the Chiefs in 2007. Other veterans of pro football would kick at Rossman’s high school in the offseason: Pro Bowl punter Darren Bennett (who played for the San Diego Chargers with Carney), Brad Daluiso and Richie Cunningham. And they graciously let him tag along.
“I really learned everything I know from these guys,” says Rossman, who played for Kansas State in 2007 and 2008.
Filling a niche
With the advent of his business, Kansas City Kicking, he now gets to fill that mentorship role himself for high school kickers locally and regionally. In an area of football starving for instruction, Rossman offers sustenance by equipping his kids with the proper fundamentals.
Kicking, punting and long-snapping are perennially overlooked positions in the high school ranks. Much of the special teams duties is split up amongst the coaches. It’s not uncommon for the kicking game to look a little scruffy under the Friday night lights, because time is scarce within the normal confines of practice for the crucial snap-hold-kick-rush sequencing. But under Rossman’s tutelage, a young kicker gets that extra time.
Recognizing that the numbers might eventually swell beyond his ability to go solo, Rossman enlisted the help of Big 12 rival Jeff Wolfert, a two-time All-Big 12 selection from Missouri and Blue Valley West High School graduate. The two actually didn’t know each other that well until their first year out of college. Yet once they realized they both lived in town, it made perfect sense to train and prepare for pro camps together.
Unlike Rossman, who would bump into NFL kickers anytime he turned around at Los Alamitos High School, Wolfert was an all-league diver as a college freshman with scant football experience. But he felt it wasn’t too late to make the change. Largely self-taught, he finished his run with Missouri in 2008 as the most accurate kicker in NCAA history, including an unblemished 185 for 185 on extra points.
As Rossman quips, “Not a bad guy to have on your staff.”
After the partnership formed, Kansas City Kicking held its first camp in July 2010 at Blue Valley West and then used Mizzou’s football facilities for a larger prep showcase this past March.
“Once we did that showcase,” Wolfert says, “it just took off from there.”
With the majority of the lessons held at Blue Valley North High School’s football field, Rossman juggles between 20 and 25 guys that he teaches through one-on-one sessions, 15 to 20 on a weekly basis. And not all kickers are created equal, which is a good thing.
“Some kids come to us and they’re very polished, whether they’ve had previous coaching or not,” says Rossman “Some kids that come to us are really raw: strong legs, but don’t have a lot of mechanics. We like to really break them down, watch where they’re at and not completely re-format their kicking technique. We don’t really believe in a cookie-cutter approach. We think that every kid’s different. We can’t say, ‘you need to kick like this guy.’ We really try to see what they’re doing, strengthen their weaknesses and focus on their strengths.”
Wolfert is also very involved with instruction, but because he’s back playing for the Omaha Nighthawks of the UFL, it’s impractical for him to teach in person.
“But we do analyze film together on the Internet, so we’re able to pick each other’s brain and analyze a kid’s technique, and both discuss what we think about it,” he says.
Drilling the details
While they conscientiously address their kids’ mechanics and look for specific target barometers—a 40- to 45-yard punt with a 4.5-second hang time for punters, for example—some sports psychology also comes into play. Rossman likes to put them in real-life football scenarios as much as possible:
The score is tied at 10. Third quarter. Third down. Ball on the 20 yard line. Your team’s driving, but there’s an incompletion. The coaches send in the field goal unit. Time to run on the field.
“Whether they make it or miss it, they run off, and do the same thing again,” Rossman says. “So again it’s mentally putting them in a game situation as opposed to standing in one spot kicking 20 balls.”
Technology enhances the teacher-pupil relationship on and off the field. Rossman has an application on his phone, iSwing, which is intended for golfers but helpful in filming kicks. He can capture video of two kicks and evaluate them alongside each other. He can break them down frame by frame. It’s instant on-field film study. A few kids who can’t commute choose to do what are called e-lessons, where they are given specific distances and camera angles and will then film their own assignments. Once it’s uploaded to YouTube, Rossman will screen-share the video with his young kicker on Skype, where they can then watch it together.
Wolfert also does yeoman’s work with their Web site, which is indispensible for recruiting purposes. When a kid comes through the Kansas City Kicking program, he’s given a profile page. And with his picture is a video box with footage from a previous session. Rossman and Wolfert know exactly what colleges want to see. Time is tight in college football offices, so this saves coaching staffs some excess anguish. Wolfert says they’ve built a database with the names of head coaches and special teams coaches for Divisions I, II and III as well as NAIA and junior college schools.
“If a kid comes to us and wants to go to a specific school, we can reach out to the coaches and establish a relationship if we haven’t already spoken with them before, and help the kids get to the schools they want to go to,” he says.
Although most of the athletes they teach hail from both sides of the state line, the company has prospects from Illinois, Nebraska, Iowa, Nevada and Oklahoma. Their top kicker for the class of 2013, Preston Soper, travels in his dad’s plane from Muskogee, Okla., to Overland Park for training every other week.
“Either we’re the closest source for them or they’ve heard positive feedback about us,” says Wolfert. “I’d like to think that it’s a combination of both. That’s kind of why we started this business venture. We knew there was a market for it. It’s a small niche market, but there is a market for it. And our business is based on the fact that we want to be the one source for all kickers, punters and snappers getting placed here in the Midwest.”
Many of the kickers have asked if they can bring their long snapper to lessons with them. To that end, Wolfert’s Nighthawks teammate and former Seattle Seahawk, Matt Overton, has joined the Kansas City Kicking staff to work with long snappers who seek pointers.
“To be successful, kicking is all timing,” Rossman says. “These kids have to get a lot of reps with their snappers and their holders. So I always preach to my kids, get out there early before practice. Stay after late. Whatever you can do to get extra reps.”
Uprights in sight
The trio has a goal for 100 participants to congregate at December’s prep showcase, this time on Rossman’s home turf at Kansas State. It’s a real litmus test for how well each kicker is doing.
The results of that showcase will be disseminated throughout all the colleges. Kansas City Kicking has already sent nine kickers and punters to college football programs in less than two years. And several campers in Manhattan, Kansas, will surely add to that total.
“We have a lot of guys that come to us and they have the drive and the determination. They just need a little bit of guidance,” Wolfert says. “So it’s rewarding to be able to help them and provide them with the information they need. They have dreams to play college football, and we help them attain those dreams.”
Key Connections
Usually it takes a good year or two of seasoning with the guys at Kansas City Kicking to groom someone for the college ranks. But they can also come through in some unique cases.
Punter Mark Krause was looking for a school after one year at Missouri Southern. The former Kearney (Mo.) High School star couldn’t get picked up. Craving another shot at college football, he sought out Jeff Wolfert and Brooks Rossman in July.
Ten days later, with their help, Krause agreed to sign with Kansas State and is coach Bill Snyder’s second-string punter on the Wildcat roster.
“We were his only option,” Wolfert says, “and we put him right into a big-time school. That’s pretty satisfying for us to see that we had that kind of pull, that we can put him into a school just based on the relationships that we have and the credibility that we’ve established.”
For more information, visit www.kansascitykicking.com.
