The Journey: A Roadmap For Every Football Kicking Specialist and Their Parents

By Marc E. Nolan and Tim Kepler

This ebook is the first one written to provide the reader with some of the issues related to what many parents and high school kicking specialists are not aware of when it comes to kicking specialists and the whole kicking "game" that exists throughout the US. The reader will be able to finally have a book to assist them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483543543

Book preview

Georgia

1

How many kicking camps, should our child attend, and when? More importantly, who is the BEST?

The above question most new kicking specialists and their parents ask me each year when I start to train them is akin to having a person who is sitting in front of a lawyer, asking how much do you charge? Most lawyers will answer in two words… It Depends.

It depends on how much money you are willing to spend each year and how many free frequent mile awards you have. Over the past four years, I have spoken to over 100 parents in all parts of the country and calculated the investment part of their journey, and while it might surprise some of you, the average football specialist’s camper will spend about $6,000.00 a year, and could be as much as $20,000.00 over this four year period. Some of you might be shocked until you add up the current spending bill for your child’s other sporting activities if they are in competitive soccer, baseball etc…

It depends on how much you buy-into the rankings game over the need for serious instructions with national and local competent kicking specialists. It depends on whether this is your child’s ambition to kick in high school and down the road hopefully college - or is it YOUR ambition to see them in the lights or on Saturday afternoon.

So then how does one get started on this journey? Normally, kicking specialists (and yes I include the long snappers as well) and their parents usually rely on Johnny All-State who is currently at the local high school to offer up his opinion of their current journey and many times has to do with Johnny’s current rankings on the various national kicking websites.

For instance, if Johnny All-State specialist is a 5.0 ranked all-everything at Kicking Camp X and then is a 4.0 and Kicking Camp Y which camp do you think he (and his parents) are going to recommend? Especially if kicking camp X has provided him a larger stage as to what college coaches are looking at him (or have been influential in getting him the offer) and is tied back into the claim factor.

Or it may be that Johnny’s Mom and Dad are still hoping that national kicking coach X has the influence to get on that last scholarship (which frankly happens every year - for many reasons - such as bad grades of the current kicker, or a transfer to another school etc…) and depending on where Johnny is on the ranking chart may continue to send newbie’s to them.

As I have tried to stress in other chapters, the journey of a specialists SHOULD start around their 8th grade year, and here are a few of them.

Most of the kicking specialist in the US come from having a background as a youth soccer player, and so from a functional view point as soccer players they do have some basic understanding of how to kick a ball and where the plant foot may need to be (although you will rarely ever hear a soccer coach talk about a "plant