Kicking World Blog

2011 Austin Kicking Camp Re-Cap

We made our 4'th Annual stop in Austin Texas for the big summer kicking camp. Everything was bigger in Texas. The kicking distances were not big, they were HUGE!

We made our 4’th Annual stop in Austin Texas for the big summer kicking camp. Everything was bigger like Texas is known for. The kicking/punting distances were not big, they were insanely HUGE! Temperatures were soaring up to 101 degrees throughout the 2-Day Instructional Kicking Camp and kicking competitions and the kicking action was just as hot.

This weekend’s camp was the most impressive display of kicking I’ve seen at any of our camps in the last 4 years. Never have so many students hit as many 50+ yard field goals as this weekend! The field goal competition was won on a 58 yarder! The most astonishing thing is that the majority of campers were under-classmen and they still hung back to 50 yards plus! – Coach Brent Grablachoff

The 2-Day Instructional Kicking Camp again proved to be a success because of focus on quality kicking instruction, technique heavy teaching and drills and fundamental demonstrations. The overall process of the camp ensured each student was ready for the big competition on Day 2.

Results
We saw improvement from EVERY kicker but notably a few extremes that are not typical results. Grant Carlson (13), an 8th grader hit a few 45 yarders at camp, gaining 10 yards on his previous long Field Goal. Brannen Carraway (14) drilled a few 45 yarders and several 40 yarders throughout the day thus improving 10 yards on his previous ‘comfortable’ range of 30 yards! Jared Haynes (13) who won the ‘younger group’ FG Competition with a 56 yarder improved nineteen yards on his previous long of 37 yards! If you don’t believe it, watch the testimonial video below!

Texas Builds Champions
Football is so big in Texas and there are so many great teams and athletes who come out of the state. Winning state championships is what it’s all about at the HS Football level in Texas. So for a little motivation before the Day 2 competition, Coach Brent invited his friend Ralph Moccio out to help out with the camp. Ralph is a former standout tight-end and safety from Toms River North HS in NJ which is the area Brent is originally from. Ralph’s football team in his senior year won the NJ State Championship! Ralph proudly showed off his big ring to all the campers and they were pumped for the competition!

Competition Preview
I’m going to provide some commentary about our 2011 Austin Texas kicking competition, but keep it relatively short and sweet because you can view the full camp stats and see the incredible results for yourself! We had 11 under-classmen and 4 upper-classmen at this event. Two in 8th grade, Eight Freshmen, One Sophomore, Two Juniors and Two Seniors (All grades are based on Fall 2011 Class). With this said, most of the time I would expect the competitions to go rather quickly since the majority of the students were frosh! Well this was not the case as even though there were a lot of young students, they all had cannons for legs!

Younger Group Kicking Competition
Grant Carlson, Wesley Sparr and Evan Crocket were all within tenths of a point of winning the younger group kickoff competition. However in the end Evan was able to pull it out by a small margin. Congrats! In the Punting competition Jared Haynes, a Hutto Hippo (school & mascot) was able to squeeze out Andrew Tucker by a very small margin. The field goal competition was ridiculous. Three students advanced all the way to 53 yards! Evan was the first to drop out at 53 yards. Then there was Connor and Jared going back and forth where they both made their 53 yarder and then Connor missed his 56 but Jared nailed it! Jared won the younger group field goal competition with an extremely impressive 56 yard field goal. Jared (13) will be a freshman in high school this coming season! Jared even went on to dual it out with the older group winner all the way back to 58 yards! Congrats Jared on winning the Golden Boot Award for the younger group!

Older Group Kicking Competition
In the Older Group we had one guy with a bazooka for a leg. He would just fire off 60+ yard kicks left and right during the warm-ups. We saw a few of his kickoffs go through the goal posts! Andrew Procell wowed campers with his big leg by winning both the kickoff and punting competition. Check out the camp stats page for his impressive numbers. The grand finale of them all is the field goal competition. You already got a little preview by reading about Jared’s feat in the younger group. Well let me introduce you to a field goal kicking machine: Kevin Marcotte from Lake Travis HS, home of the 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 etc. State Champs! Winning at Lake Travis HS is a tradition and Kevin certainly represented his school to the fullest in our field goal competition.

Kevin Marcotte was a perfect 8 for 8 through 50 yards folks! That is consecutive kicks from 30L, 30R, 35L, 45R, 40M, 45M, 50M, 53M! Because him and Jared kept drilling their kicks we had to move the boys back or else we’d be there all day! Chris Nichols and Andrew Procell were still ‘alive’ through 53 yards but they both had their second miss on the first 56 yard field goal so they were eliminated. Kevin missed his 56 yard field goal too, but that was only his first miss of the whole event! Kevin had now won the older group competition but surprisingly Jared Haynes, the 13 year old with a cannon was still in the race. We let the two face off until one was left standing. We had to go back to 58 yards until finally Jared came up just short while Kevin nailed his and won the 2011 Kicking World Austin Kicking Camp ‘Golden Boot Award’ which signifies he is the BEST kicker at camp. Congratulations to both Jared and Kevin! Check out all the great photos from our 2-Day Texas Kicking Camp!

The Next Level
Do you want to showcase your talent at a Kicking World camp? How about learn from awesome coaches who put their hearts into what they do? Our main focus is helping you grow, improve and get results. Check out the video testimonials below to learn why people come to our camps. This is a video of several students from the Austin camp who share their experience about the weekend. We encourage you to check out our website, videos, social media pages and connect with Coach Brent and staff. Be sure to sign up for our next camp or schedule private lessons with us. Till next time, keep kicking and ya’ll have a great summer!