By Michael Casagrande / Ledger-Enquirer

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- The big game has a funny way of crowning unlikely Alabama football heroes.

Barely recruited Texan linebacker Eryk Anders forced the game-clinching fumble in the Crimson Tide's 2010 BCS championship game win over the Longhorns. Two years later, a long-haired former soccer player from basketball country kicked Alabama past LSU for another title.

Anders is now a mixed martial artist while a Friday afternoon spring scrimmage is next up for his successor, Jeremy Shelley. Entering his final season at Alabama still without a scholarship, the Raleigh, N.C., product has the wind at his back after a few months in the sunshine.

He nailed all four attempts in last Saturday's first scrimmage, but it doesn't compare to that early-January night in the Superdome. Scoring 15 of Alabama's 21 points with a record five field goals, Shelley's right leg created a celebrity.

He called the last three months "surreal."

"It was busy," Shelley said. "Had a lot of interviews and radio interviews and a lot of stuff from back home, a lot of friends and family friends talking to me and it was a lot of fun."

The run up to the redemptive title-game win wasn't quite as celebratory. kicking game questions lingered the last meeting with LSU. A combined 2-for-6 effort was shared by Shelley and long-distance specialist Cade Foster in November's 9-6 loss.

Shelley handled all seven tries in the rematch, making five.

One was blocked and the other drifted to the right, but with the defensive effort Alabama mounted, the five proved more than enough.

Now, it's time to move on, he said.

His third season sharing duties with Foster could involve extra competition. Alabama signed Adam Griffith, one the nation's top kicking recruits who will enroll this summer.

"It's always great to have a new face," Shelley said. "Hopefully, he'll do great for our team. If he's up there, it's going to be great because he's going to push us even further than we push each other. I'm looking forward to having him on campus."

Griffith had a championship moment of his own when a 32-yarder in overtime won the Georgia Class AA state title game. He's also known for having a strong right leg that averaged 68 yards on kickoff duties as a high school senior.

That could become a factor in August for a team that struggled with touchbacks last season. Foster averaged 63.3 yards on 81 kickoffs last year after netting 65.2 in 84 tries as a freshman.

Of course kickoff rules will change starting this fall. The tee will sit five yards closer to the end zone on the opposite 35-yard line instead of the 30. Touchbacks will now place the ball at the 25 instead of the 20.

"We did some research with NFL teams to kind of see what they learned from it last year and how they had to adapt to it and what they had to do," coach Nick Saban said. "It'll be interesting to see if there's a lot more touchbacks or more teams just running it out from deeper trying to gain field position."

That's still a long way off.

Daily improvement remains the only factor Shelley controls.

It helps having long snapper Carson Tinker and holder AJ McCarron back in the kicking battery.

"With field goals, you have to have that timing, and also the chemistry of knowing he's going to be able to have the ball there all the time when you need it," Shelley said. "We have that. We've developed that over the last two years. I'm very confident in A.J. and his holding."

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Former Alabama long-snapper Carson Tinker received a standing ovation as Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley held him up as an example of strength in the face of adversity during his Tuesday evening "State of the State" address.

Bentley said the state and its leaders should follow Tinker's example.

One of 62 tornadoes that ravaged the state last spring demolished Tinker's home, killing his girlfriend. Tinker and his team went on to win the national championship.

Bentley praised Tinker for his athletic performance despite his injuries and personal tragedies. He said Tinker performed a thankless job, but did it to perfection.

Bentley said the state and its leaders should follow Tinker's example. He cited the way Alabamians pulled together in the aftermath of the April 27 tornadoes as the way legislators need to act as stewards of the state.

By Michael Casagrande / Montgomery Advertiser

TUSCALOOSA - From his seat in Bryant-Denny Stadium on an early-November night, Adam Griffith saw the perils of college football kicking.

He was on a visit the day Crimson Tide specialists missed four of six kicks in the 9-6 overtime loss to LSU. It made an impact.

"I think for the first time there, he felt the pressure of being a college kicker," said Hal Lamb, Griffith's high school coach.

As the nation's No. 1 high school kicker according to two recruiting services, the Calhoun (Ga.) High senior faced his share of tense moments. That, and his character Lamb said, should help his transition to college.

Griffith is committed to sign as part of Alabama's top-ranked recruiting class Wednesday. Less than two months earlier, the weight of a state championship landed on the shoulders of the Polish-born kicker.

Foreshadowing Jeremy Shelley's five-kick BCS title game performance, Griffith nailed four in the Class AA title game on Dec. 9.

His 32-yarder in overtime beat Buford, led by fellow Alabama commit Dillon Lee, 27-24 after making a 46-yard kick earlier in the game.

Lamb said Griffith was true from as deep as 52 yards in the undefeated run to the Georgia Dome this fall.

"I wouldn't hesitate to put him out there 55 or less," Lamb said. "It didn't matter what the conditions were. He's a special talent. That's for sure."

Scott Kennedy, the director of scouting for Scout.com, saw Griffith's big day in the state title game.

"He hit one from about 40 yards out that would have been about 65 dead down the middle," Kennedy said. "In a state championship in the biggest level he could possibly be, he has made a big kick."

A video posted on YouTube shows Griffith connecting on a 60-yard kick in practice. The deep drive stayed just inside the left upright.

He was also a weapon teeing it up on kickoffs.

Lamb said 82 percent of those attempts were touchbacks and another video posted online shows several kicks landing beyond the end zone.

"Not only does he kick it far, but he kicks the ball high," Lamb said. "I think that's what (Nick) Saban likes. He likes height on the ball so he can get down and cover. He gets the ball high on extra points and field goals as well."

Translating that ability to the next level can be tricky, though.

And as Kennedy said, there's no such thing as a can't-miss kicker coming from high school to college.

"Unless you can get in their heads somehow, you can't judge a kicker," Kennedy said. "I can go find 500 kids who can kick a 50-yard field goal, but that doesn't mean they're great kickers when it counts."

Making that game-winner in the state finals still means something, he said.

"While doing it in the SEC under the lights isn't exactly the same," Kennedy said. "But it's all relative. It's the biggest moment in his life and he rose to the occasion."

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The “Game of the (21^st) Century” turned out to be all about the kickers.

They were the stars and the goats.

In the end, LSU won 9-6 in overtime. Drew Alleman kicked the 25-yard game-winning field goal after Alabama missed its fourth field goal of the game on its first possession of overtime. 

Bottom line: LSU’s special teams won the game and maybe the chance to be national champions. The game lived up to the hype, at least defensively. The best offensive players turned out to be defensive backs.

LSU and Alabama could meet again, provided both of them win out.

Alabama’s kickers were not good enough (two for six) in this one. LSU’s quarterbacks weren’t too good either. Jarrett Lee threw two interceptions, one less turnover than the Tigers had going into the game.

There was lots of non-scoring in this one. There were four interceptions total, three missed field goals and no touchdowns. It was a game that purists would love but today’s crowd would rather miss. In the Midwest, meanwhile, Oklahoma State was fighting for its BCS life against Kansas State, in a game that surpassed 80 points.

Both Lee and AJ McCarron were intercepted twice. A pick by each in the second half led to a field goal. The kickers were both the stars and goats. Alabama’s “long” kicker Cade Foster missed field goal attempts of 44 and 50 yards in the game’s first 12 ½ minutes. “Short” kicker Jeremy Shelley had one blocked before making a 34-yarder.

Alleman tied it 3-3 on the last play of the first half after LSU stalled at the Alabama 2. The longest run of the night may have been Les Miles sprinting to the 10 to get the timeout called with two seconds remaining that allowed Allenman to kick the game-typing 19-yard field goal (basically an extra point).

You’ve never seen such drama for a kick so short.

From AL.com

MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- When veteran high school football coach Lee Holladay retired from coaching, well, he didn’t really retire at all. He went back home to Orrville where he joined Coach Harry Crum’s staff at Keith High School.

The Bears beat Marengo Friday night 42-6 to close out an 8-2 regular season as Keith heads into the state playoffs. 

The game was highlighted by a blast from the past when Keith senior linebacker/place-kicker Bobby Barnes booted a drop-kick extra point to give the Bears a 28-6 lead. Holladay said it was the first time he’d seen a drop kick since 1961 when his own player, Billy Wayne Clark, booted a drop-kick field goal for Louisville High School.

Barnes’ rare drop kick grabs this week’s Alabama High School Athletic Association Spotlight as Week 10 closed out the regular football season.

“We were talking about drop kicks a few months back and Coach Crum said he remembered seeing Doug Flutie kick a drop-kick field goal in an NFL game,” Holladay said. “Bobby said he wanted to try it, so we worked on it a little in practice. When he first tried it he kicked the ball into the center’s back and hit our guards and tackles. He got better and got some through the uprights in practice, so we decided to let him give it a try. It shocked us all when he made it. He was excited though. The entire team was excited.

 “Football is supposed to be fun. This put a lot of fun into our practices and a lot of fun into our last game.”

Barnes’ unusual feat edged out an outstanding passing performance by Phillips quarterback Rodney camp in a 62-50 win over Brilliant. camp completed 29-of-45 passes for 460 yards and seven touchdowns. He also rushed for a TD and threw four two-point conversion passes as he had a hand in 56 of his team’s 62 points.  On defense he intercepted a pass and also recovered a fumble.

By Stephen Hargis / Times Free Press

STEVENSON, Ala. — The bandage, wrapped tightly around his left knee, is the only reminder that Cesar Diaz probably should not be on the field.

But with each game, North Jackson High School’s junior kicker adds to the list of reasons his teammates are grateful he continues to play.

Despite a torn ACL in his plant leg, Diaz remains a steady weapon for North Jackson, which moved up to No. 3 in Alabama’s Class 4A rankings this week after a narrow win over seventh-ranked Guntersville. Diaz’s 19-yard chip shot late in the fourth quarter proved to be the difference in that 23-21 win last week.

“He hasn’t missed a beat despite the injury,” Chiefs coach Shawn Peek said. “When he told us he had hurt his knee, we started having tryouts this summer to find a replacement. But that wasn’t pretty.

“Then he said he had decided to put off having surgery until after the season, and once we saw him at practice, we could tell he was still going to be solid for us. We never hesitate to send him out there.”

While playing backyard soccer with friends last spring, Diaz heard his knee pop and felt a sharp pain move down the back of his leg. Ignoring the injury, about a month later while again playing in a pickup soccer match, he planted his left foot to make a cut and felt the knee completely give out. An MRI confirmed Diaz had torn the ACL and suffered slight damage to his meniscus, and doctors advised him that immediate surgery was needed.

But realizing that would mean missing the entire football season, Diaz opted to delay the surgery until December.

“I thought about it a lot, and talked about it with my parents, and just decided that I probably couldn’t hurt it any worse,” he said. “So I just tape it up before every practice and game and keep kicking.

“I knew my team needed me, and I wanted to be out there with them.”

Diaz has made 19 of 21 extra-point attempts and is 4-of-4 on field goals this season. For his career, he has connected on 14 of 15 field-goal tries, with a long of 38 yards, and made 144 of 151 extra-point attempts. According to Chiefs coaches, he routinely makes 50-plus-yard attempts during practice and has made a 61-yard attempt several times.

“It’s like with any of those good kickers, it just sounds different when the ball comes off his foot,” Peek said. “He gives us a scoring option we wouldn’t have otherwise.

“He’s a very competitive kid, and the thing that separates him from other kickers with a strong leg is his accuracy. You see college guys missing 30-yarders every Saturday, but his almost always split the uprights.”

Diaz’s leg isn’t just an offensive weapon for a team that is outscoring opponents by an average of 39-9. Most of his kickoffs go for touchbacks, including one last week that cleared the crossbar in the back of the end zone.

“It’s huge when you make the other team start from its 20 and drive it 80 yards,” Peek said. “He helps us in a lot of different ways.”

In middle school, Diaz knew very little about American football. But like most preteens looking for a way to make friends, he quickly realized that the fastest way to become popular was to learn about and play the game that dominated local discussions in a town that has only a 1.5-percent Hispanic population and a school that does not offer soccer.

“I went to a game and liked the way they were hitting each other, so I decided to start playing,” Diaz said. “But once the coaches found out I could kick, they told me to work on that. It’s funny to think that what started as a hobby could become something that I have a future doing.”

By Mike Easterling / Huntsville Times

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Joel Sheppard steps off his paces. First back, then to the side. Set, he sprints toward the football.

He doesn’t so much kick the ball as to attack it as he goes through workouts following a freshman practice at Huntsville High.

“His whole goal in life is to kick a football as far as he can,’’ said David Sheppard, Joel’s father and a former running back for Grissom in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

Yeah, Sheppard has a jock’s goal. That might not seem like much of an ultimate achievement, if it weren’t for the fact that Sheppard is autistic.

He’s currently defying any notions that an autistic athlete can only be found at a Special Olympics event. He kicked for Hampton Cove Middle for two seasons, making “25 or 26” extra points by his dad’s estimates.

In Week 1 of this varsity season, he was called on to kick the final PAT of a rout over Scottsboro and made it.

“It felt good,’’ Sheppard said.

No doubt. Autism or not, the ninth-grader is perfect in his young varsity career.

And don’t doubt this – Sheppard can kick.

“Watch this,’’ Panthers varsity coach Scott Sharp said before the season began during a preseason practice.

On cue, Sheppard hurled himself at the ball and holder on a field goal attempt and sent the ball sailing. On the next attempt, he kicked so hard his foot slipped on the follow through and he landed on his back.

“He doesn’t get cheated,’’ Sharp said before sending Sheppard back to the freshmen practice.

He’s currently handling kickoff and extra-point duties for the freshman team.

------

David Sheppard noticed one constant when he took his son to McGucken Park to kick a soccer ball around.

“All he would do is kick it as hard as he can,’’ David said.
In 2008, David took a football on the trip to McGucken. He pointed to the field goals on the field and said, “See if you can kick the ball through that thing.’’

“It was cold that day,’’ David recalled, noting that Joel didn’t have much luck.

Then spring rolled around.

“A couple of months later he was kicking 35-yarders. In shorts, he can make 85 percent of his kicks between 35-40.’’
Shorts or not, David said, “I’ve seen him hit from 55, two 54s, 53 and was about 4-of-8 from there,’’ one day.

Joel attended a kicking camp at Huntsville and got technique tips from Vann and Lee Tiffin of Alabama fame and UNA guru Mike King.

“I’m just here to retrieve balls and hold it,’’ David said.
He does, however, remind his son of the tips he’s received.
“He needs to get more consistent,’’ David said. “But he’s got the leg.’’

He’s also throws a few curveballs.

“I’m a Jets fan,’’ Joel said. “The pro sports. Not college.’’
“Not Alabama?’’ echoed David. “That’s a first one on me.’’

-------

Joel Sheppard steps off his paces. First back, then to the side. Set, he sprints toward the football. This time with his helmet off and his curly, blond hair blowing in the wind.

Many of his kickoffs go far enough they’d be touchbacks in a game or high enough to get the job done. He then heads to the 30 and starts knocking field goals through the uprights.

“I’m out here with him four, five times a week,’’ David said.

Huntsville coaches see the two not only after weekday practices but on Saturdays, practicing mostly field goals and kickoffs but the occasional punt. They also work on helping Joel develop a better understanding of the game.

“We figured out this is what he can do,’’ David said. “We’ll hone it and let God do his work.’’

Joel attends classes that David said his wife Beverly assures him are “tailored to (Joel) but challenging courses, not just home ec.’’

After school, it’s back to kicking.

“It’s his passion,’’ David said.

By Michael Casagrande / Decataur Daily

TUSCALOOSA — A few blocks from the main road sits a meadow in the heart of Tuscaloosa.

It’s quiet there.

About a hundred feet off the dead-end road sits a wooden cross. There are flowers, hand-written notes, an Alabama shaker, a football.

And an empty red chair.

It was in this serene slice of real estate where Carson Tinker’s life changed in a blink four months ago Saturday. The unapologetic EF-4 tornado of April 27 threw him several hundred feet from his pulverized home into that pasture. It’s where his girlfriend Ashley Harrison died.

Mere words can’t capture the scene.

Debris no longer litters the grass. The remains of a house across the way came down Saturday afternoon in a city still cleaning its wounds.

That’s where Tinker comes in, yet again.

As the long snapper for the Alabama Crimson Tide football team, he isn’t accustomed to the attention. It’s not a glamour position.

But in the months after losing so much, Tinker emerged as a symbol of this community’s rebirth and a reminder of its collective grief. His story went national when Sports Illustrated told his tale of heartbreak and survival in its May 23 edition. Since, and even before then, the support came from all directions — phone calls, emails, old-fashioned postal mail.

Just strapping on his crimson No. 51 jersey late Saturday morning is the next step in that mission. He never doubted he’d return to football. No way.

Missing Saturday’s season opener with Kent State wasn’t considered.

The broken wrist and deep gash on his ankle wouldn’t alter his course back to Bryant-Denny Stadium.

“I’ve been looking forward to that day for a very long time,” Tinker said. “Not just the day, the season. Every day I’ve been working to get ready for the season, and it’s here, and I’m ready. You know what I mean? You can’t put into words how that feels.”

Still, it’s hard to imagine a smile on the face of someone who lost so much. But in reality, it’s hard to knock one off Tinker’s.

That glow greeted a few old friends eager for a reunion a few weeks back.

The official Alabama football roster lists Tinker’s hometown as Murfreesboro, Tenn., but the Meek family knows better.

They remember the youngster with an “infectious smile” from Central Baptist Church and the ball fields of Decatur.

Tinker grew up in Northern Alabama before a job transfer moved his family to Tennessee after his freshman year at Austin High.

Steve Meek was one of his football coaches there and a good friend of the entire Tinker family.

He hadn’t seen Carson in several years, so the family invited him to join the group at a downtown Tuscaloosa pizza place while in town.

“Oh, he just had that big ol’ grin that I remembered from back when he was a kid in church,” said Meek, now the head football coach at Decatur Heritage. “He came through the door with a big sheepish grin on his face. It was good to see.”

Before long, he was devouring a Hawaiian pizza and talking about his zeal for the future.

“He ate a bunch,” Meek said.

His daughter, Laura Meek, is just a few years older than Tinker. She remembers a mischievous Tinker doing “typical things a boy would do” in their church youth group back in Decatur.

She also recalls horror of that late afternoon back in April when everything changed.

Laura Meek was watching storm coverage on television back home in Decatur when the phone rang. It was her boyfriend, Jesse Perrin, son of former Alabama star defensive back Benny Perrin.

Wow, was it bad.

April 27

His house in ruins, Perrin stood in his front yard watching the twister chew threw the heart of Tuscaloosa.

“Immediately, I started thinking about Carson,” Laura Meek said. “Once I saw the video of where the tornado had come from, I knew it had come directly over Carson’s house. There’s no way it could have missed it.”

The next few days were chaos.

Laura and her mother, Sandra Meek, drove to Tuscaloosa the following day. The 23-year-old “lost it” when they tried to approach Tinker’s house.

“You couldn’t even get to it,” Laura Meek said. “You couldn’t even get to where it was. It was just insane. I just broke down the second I saw it.”

Only a few cinder blocks remained of the house at 611 25th St., while about half of the next-door neighbor’s stands, as if frozen in time.

Tinker was still at DCH Hospital when the Meeks first reached out to his family. Laura spoke with his mother five days later when he was released, but she was eager to see the her childhood friend who grew into a big-time college football player.

Recovery

It was closer to two weeks after the storm when Laura Meek drove south from Decatur to Birmingham to visit Carson after a physical rehabilitation session.

Man, was she nervous.

What should she say? What shouldn’t she say? This was going to be hard.

“He had told me that he wanted to marry Ashley, knowing that he lost her and knowing how much he loved her and cared about her, I was just really, really nervous. I didn’t know what to say,” Laura Meek said. “I didn’t know how to be.”

The strength she encountered immediately put her at ease before lunch at a local restaurant. The Tinkers spoke openly and casually about Harrison.

Meek was amazed.

He reached up and gave her a big hug, though his swollen legs made it hard to stand right away.

“He was in such a good mood, better than what I expected,” Meek said. “He was in a good place already. He would joke about things. He was laughing and smiling.”

After that lunch, she texted or called every few days. She remembers how touched Tinker was by Alabama coach Nick Saban’s frequent visits to his Birmingham rehab facility.

“If you were around Carson in practice, he’s an upbeat guy,” Saban said. “You’d never know anything had happened at all. He’s probably handled this as well as anybody could.

“We certainly try to give him every support we could. His teammates have, we as coaches have, and used other people to try to help him manage what he has had to go through, not only the injuries he sustained and the loss he had personally.”

And no matter how dark it got, football was always a rallying force for the long snapper.

“You really can’t explain the relief that I get from this,” Tinker said. “I was telling somebody earlier. They were asking me how the coaches have treated me. I said, ‘The same exact way. Nothing is different coming out here. They’re not feeling sorry for me.’ That’s the most (therapeutic) thing. I mean I haven’t been doing bad, but they always demand your very best.

“And it is comforting to know you’re out there getting yelled at. I guess that sounds weird.”

Life’s next step

When he jogs onto into Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday morning, Tinker will be a junior. He redshirted in 2008 and played sparingly in 2009 before assuming the starting job at long snapper last fall.

That leaves two years of eligibility, but Tinker is getting a head start on a possible new career path.

Not long before devouring the pineapple and ham covered pizza with the Meeks, Tinker realized his tragedy could be inspiration to others.

“He really wanted to talk to people and share his story and talk to people about God,” Laura Meek said. “It seemed like he wanted to be a really big influence in people’s lives and share his story with everyone.”

Tinker recently began speaking to church groups including one in Arab on Aug. 14 — the first day off for Alabama football players in the eight days since practice opened. By the following morning, it was back to football with two Monday practices starting at 9:30.

While pondering his next move, Tinker likes to quote motivational speaker Kevin Elko, who gives an annual presentation to the Alabama football team.

“Some people pray for blessings, but I pray that I can be a blessing for somebody,” Tinker said. “I want to go out and I want to reach everybody that I can and try to inspire them, because I mean there’s a lot of people that have been through very similar things that I’ve been through, and if I can help them, I’m all for it.”

At 6 p.m. today, he is scheduled to speak at Forest Lake United Methodist Church in Tuscaloosa. The facility still bears scars from the Mother Nature’s April 27 fury.

It also stands mere city blocks from the peaceful grove that Tinker loved and lost so much.

He told Sports Illustrated he was hitting golf balls there on the day of the storm. His dog and Harrison’s were there, too, fetching each shot he struck.

Beside the memorial to the lost love of his life and the empty red chair sits a row of golf balls, a club and two more crosses with dog leashes fastened tight.

It was quiet there Saturday afternoon — not a soul in sight in a landscape years from complete recovery.

Still, the energy is unmistakable.

And Tinker won’t let that go to waste.

By Mark Maynard / Prokickernews.com

Prokicker.com camper Thomas Meadows has some big decisions ahead of him.

Meadows, one of the nation’s top combo kickers, received a scholarship offer from the University of Richmond on Monday and several other colleges are knocking on his door, including the University of Alabama.

Rusty Meadows (2012 class) said his son attended the University of Richmond last weekend and the coaches wasted no time in offering Thomas a scholarship. They called two days after the camp was finished after reviewing film.

Thomas has a date with Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide on Friday at Alabama’s kicking camp. Father and son went to A-Day in the spring when 92,000 fans packed the stadium to watch the scrimmage game. Virginia Tech, Virginia, Purdue and Florida State are among some of the other schools interested in Meadows, his father said.

Thomas Meadows has one more year of high school at Goochland County in Virginia. The school won a state championship in 2006 and has had winning records from 2007-2010 but hasn’t made it back to the semifinals.

Meadows, an all-around good athlete, has been a punter for Goochland County with incredible hang time. Despite punting two-thirds of the season with a pulled hamstring, he averaged 38 yards per kick and only had six return yards in 19 punts. He kicked off half a dozen times and three of those were in the end zone.

“There were a lot of fair catches (on the punts), which you don’t see in high school,” his father said.

Both father and son credit Prokicker.com camps for Thomas' development as a punter and kicker. He attended his first Prokicker.com camp in 2009 in Huntington, W.Va., where Rusty Meadows has family ties. They immediately were attracted to the camp’s professional staff and instruction.

“He went to his first camp and they got him hook, line and sinker,” Rusty Meadows said. “That’s where he picked up most of his instruction.”

Meadows said Thomas learned under Taylor Long, a Prokicker.com staffer, and camp director Rick Sang. He took something away from every camp he attended. Sang has been impressed with Meadows, especially from a fundamental standpoint.

“He’s just really a technically sound kid, a good athlete who is going to be very successful,” Sang said. “Technique-wise I think he’s the best punter out there. He could go either way. I personally think he’s a better punter.”

punting is where he gets most of the attention, his father said, although at the camp in Richmond his kickoffs off the ground made an impression, too.

“When he kicks off the ground he kicks over the capture net,” Rusty Meadows said. “They were filming the whole camp. They went in and reviewed the film after the camp and were very impressed and decided to make him an offer.”

During the directional punting drills, he had three consecutive kicks that went out of bounds on the 3-yard line, his father said.

“That comes from years of soccer,” said Rusty Meadows. “His directional punts are pretty amazing.”

The Prokicker.com camp also teaches the parents to do their homework when looking at college rosters. The Meadows did that. They knew that Richmond had a combo kicker on its current roster, which made Thomas' stock as a combo kicker that much greater.

“Rick and them taught us well,” Rusty Meadows said. “That’s what we always liked about Rick’s camps. There’s so much to them. They want to give the kickers the best opportunity to find the best place for them.”

When Richmond extended the offer to Thomas, the first thing he told his father to do was “call Rick Sang and let them know about it."

Rusty called Sang to tell him the good news. "They had a lot to do with where we're at today,”  he said.