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Parkersburg South High School product Cody Nutter will have his chance in the NFL.  The now former West Virginia Mountaineer was signed after the NFL Draft by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

“It’s awesome, unbelievable and I’m more excited than I ever have been,” Nutter said. 

Nutter knew his chances of being drafted as a long snapper weren’t great, but he did hope to at least sign on with a team in the end.

“I wasn’t expecting to get drafted.  They said you’re lucky if one long snapper gets drafted,” Nutter said.  “I was expecting to just get a chance to go into a camp and try to prove myself and I was fortunate enough to be contacted by multiple teams.  I’m more than grateful.

“Tampa Bay was never really in the mix,” he continued.  “But then I got a call at the end of the sixth round from their special teams coordinator and they said they were thinking about taking me in the seventh round – but they told me to hang tight if I wasn’t drafted and they would like to take me as a free agent.

Nutter will join draft picks Najee Goode and Keith Tandy, along with tight end signee Tyler Urban in Tampa Bay – all former Mountaineers.

“I had already talked to Najee Goode and Keith Tandy and was congratulating them.  They’re good buddies of mine,” Nutter said.  “I’ve been lifting with them and getting ready for Pro Day and then for the draft.  So, it was awesome.”

It’s a unique position for Nutter.  Being a state native, he understands NFL products from inside West Virginia aren’t simply a dime a dozen.

“It means a lot and I’ve had a dream of doing it since I was real little,” he said.  “I know instate players don’t always get the opportunity at the NFL, but I hope kids can see this in the state that if you keep working hard and keep pushing toward your dreams, you can accomplish whatever you want to.”

As for the long snapping, Nutter started in pee-wee football and eventually carried it into junior high.  He long snapped in high school as well to get on the field earlier.  After coming to WVU as a tight end and long snapper, he eventually settled on just focusing on long snapping.

“I just figured long snapping would give me a better chance to get on the field faster,” Nutter said.  “I started thinking about (long snapping in the NFL) maybe within the last year or two that I actually had a pretty good shot.  Growing up, I would have never ever thought that.”

By DAVE HICKMAN / Charleston Gazette

MORGANTOWN - It's not all about attitude, but it helps to start with a good one.

That seems to be at least a bit of the philosophy of Joe DeForest as he tries to repair West Virginia's not-always-special special teams.

A bad punt or a bad kick? Well, those can be addressed through mechanics and practice and film study and just plain old hard work. But if, as seemed to be the case more than once a year ago, those punters and/or kickers start thinking too much about their failures, well, that's often too much of a hurdle to overcome.

"If they let it get in their heads, then no amount of fundamentals in the world is going to help them,'' DeForest said. "That's got to be first and foremost. Then we can work on mechanics.''

As West Virginia goes through 15 spring practices this month and next, most of the focus is, naturally, on tweaking and refining an offense with worlds of potential and building a brand new defense from the ground up with a virtually new coaching staff and a host of new faces on the field.

But there's also a new emphasis on special teams, one that's perhaps long overdue. Dana Holgorsen has shuffled his staff and put Steve Dunlap in charge of the special teams. He hired DeForest away from Oklahoma State primarily to serve as the new co-defensive coordinator, but also for his acumen as a special teams guru.

Oh, might he have been nice to have had around a year ago when first Corey Smith and then Michael Molinari went through their stretches of 50- and 60-yard punts followed by strings of frustrating shanks and misfires.

Already Dunlap is noticing a difference.

"They're getting coached. Joe DeForest is coaching them and he knows a lot about kickers,'' Dunlap said. "A lot of those things that happened to them last year, there were a lot of us here who couldn't fix it. I've never been a guy who could coach the kickers. Joe's a guy who understands the kickers and the snappers. He's going to be a big bonus.''

As the special teams coordinator at Oklahoma State, DeForest oversaw some of the best in the country. He left in Stillwater perhaps the best punter and kicker in the country next year in Quinn Sharp. He was third in the nation in punting average last season, made 22 of his 25 field goal attempts, was the leading kick scorer in the country and led the country with 61 touchbacks on kickoffs.

OK, so DeForest can't take all the credit for that, and he's not likely to turn Smith or Molinari or Tyler Bitancurt into Quinn Sharp. But after 22 years of coaching kickers and punters, he's gotten to know how to handle these guys and make them better.

That includes what he's now doing at West Virginia, which is filming the kickers and punters every day and going over technique before every practice.

"It's just something you work at,'' DeForest said. "And anytime you work at something you get better at it, just like the players do. But I've also been very fortunate that I've had great specialists. We've recruited great specialists and they've performed.''

There's more to special teams than just kicking, of course. There's coverage and returns, placement, all sorts of things. There's also finding the right players to man the teams. That was an issue as recently as last season when Holgorsen would almost routinely fire most of a kickoff coverage unit, replace them and wind up replacing them again, sometimes in mid-game.

There are two things Dunlap and DeForest hope will help that situation this year: more scholarship players and more emphasis.

"The problem here in the past is we've never been up to speed with people,'' Dunlap said. "We've been under scholarship [limits] a little bit and we just didn't have enough bodies running around. By the time you go to midseason on we started running short of bodies because of injuries and that kind of thing. You can't put every one of your starters on every special team, so we tried to prioritize what starters we put on those teams.

"The punt is always your first priority. There aren't many plays that average 35 or 40 yards a play. And the coverage teams always take a little bit of a priority over the return teams. Those are the can-get-you-beat teams.''

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - West Virginia University has added another kicker to the roster.

The Mountaineers announced Thursday the signing of Josh Lambert, a high school kicker and punter from Garland, Tex. He made 9 of 16 field goals last season, including a 51-yarder.

WVU now has added 28 new players to the roster, including 22 signed last week and five mid-year enrollees.

By Chris Fontanazza / Metro News

Soon the Mountaineers will officially add a 28^th member to their 2012 recruiting class. kicker Josh Lambert from Garland High School (TX) committed to West Virginia University the day after National Signing Day and will soon be faxing his signed letter of intent to the Mountaineer coaching staff.

Lambert is a 2-star kicker by Scout.com and comes from a high school that has produced a lot of solid kickers in the NCAA, including former Ray Guy Award winner and Oklahoma State kicker Matt Fodge. Garland head football coach Jeff Jordan says his program has been grateful to have had so many great kickers and Lambert is one of the best they’ve had.

“We’ve been really lucky,” stated Jordan. “We’ve had a lot of really good kickers come through over the years. Josh is right up there with any of them that have come through. We had a kid kick for us that went to [Texas] A&M and Fodge went to Oklahoma State.”

Lambert’s decision to choose the Mountaineers happened very quickly. Throughout the recruiting process he was never on WVU’s radar. For that matter he didn’t even kick at any of WVU’s camps. It’s very rare for a school to sign a kicker without watching him kick live.

“It’s very different because everybody watches the video and people will come watch them in games and this was so strange by West Virginia,” explained Jordan. “Almost everyone tells the kickers and punters they’re not going to offer them until they can actually see them kick in person.”

WVU’s coaching staff took Jordan sight unseen after receiving seeral recommendations. Then shortly after National Signing Day Lambert had a scholarship offer from West Virginia.

“It came out of the blue,” said Jordan. “Josh had been getting looks from several people and he had offers from several smaller schools.”

“From my understanding it all came down one Thursday afternoon,” Jordan said. “They called last week and said ‘Hey look we may have something open, but we don’t know how it’s going to play out' and all of that stuff. But lo and behold it popped open and everything came down after signing day.”

Lambert did have scholarship offers from many Division II schools, Louisiana Tech was interested, but wanted him to gray shirt and both Oklahoma and Texas A&M wanted him to walk-on. West Virginia was by far the best offer he had and he will compete for kickoffs, kicking and punting.

punting is the area WVU needs the most help in. There were times last season when West Virginia’s punters looked atrocious. WVU ranked dead last in the conference and at one point of the season the Mountaineers were ranked dead last in the nation in net punting.

The Texas native has had a very successful career at Garland. During his junior year he kicked a school record 53-yard field goal. He also has three career field goals of 50-plus yards and eight career field goals of 47-plus yards.

Jordan and the rest of the Garland coaching staff are very happy Lambert is heading to West Virginia and their reputation of sending kickers to the Division I level continues. Jordan also feels Lambert will fit right in with the rest of the football team.

“The other kids down here love him and they just consider him to be part of the team,” said Jordan. “You know how sometimes kickers are a little separate from everybody else, but Josh has never been like that.”

It’s still unknown when Lambert will arrive in Morgantown because he’s still getting everything finalize with his scholarship and letter of intent, but Jordan said Lambert will be in Morgantown in time for fall camp, if not earlier.

West Virginia wide receiver/return specialist Tavon Austin was named the Big East special teams player of the year, the conference announced on Thursday.

Austin has returned 31 kickoffs for 821 yards and two touchdowns this season, including a 100-yard score in the season opener against Marshall.

Austin was also named to the All-Big East first team as a wide receiver and return specialist.

Ben Gaughan / The Daily Athenaeum

As a walk-on, redshirt junior Cecil Level never doubted his ability to compete with Division I-A athletes.

Coming from a small school like West Virginia Tech where he started for two years at cornerback, Level decided to transfer to West Virginia.

Former WVU cornerback and assistant coach at WVU Tech, Michael Scott, brought Level to visit Morgantown and encouraged the young corner to move on because he believed Level could play on a bigger stage.

Level sat and watched last year due to eligibility rules and took in everything he could from other teammates like senior cornerback Keith Tandy and redshirt senior defensive back Brantwon Bowser.

"From the corners who were here last year to the corners that are here now, I learned a lot from them," Level said. "Almost every day of me being out (on the practice field), I learned almost everything from them."

The Fayetteville, Ga., native made great strides in practice, listening to every word head coach Dana Holgorsen and cornerbacks coach Dave Lockwood would say, earning him a spot on the kickoff team.

Level has impressed the coaches so much that he's not only on the kickoff team, he's made punt return, kickoff return and second string punt duties for the special teams unit.

After the first game against Marshall, Holgorsen expressed his happiness with Level in the effort he gave on special teams and even noticed Level had been 15 yards down the field ahead of every other WVU player on the unit.

"You just have to take pride in it, even though it's special teams, you just have to take pride in it," Level said.

Many players may think it's difficult to always perform day in, day out on special teams, but Level believes being on special teams is a privilege, and it is not hard to give as much effort as possible.

"This is my only chance to get out there and play special teams," he said. "I'm going to take that, I'll take that chance. Any chance I ever get to touch the field, I just want to go hard out there and show them what I can do."

Level says the biggest difference from WVU Tech that he's noticed is that everyone on the team is capable of playing, everyone wants to compete and everyone is good enough to compete for a position.

Before he got to WVU, the redshirt junior had not played any special teams since his high school days. But, he said he still took as much pride in it then as he does now.

Over the first two weeks of the 2011 season, Level has earned special teams champion by his teammates and coaches.

"I'm excited. I'm glad I did my job again, and I could get this award again," Level said.

Level is satisfied with how he's been performing when he's been on the field so far. He wants to keep doing what he can do to give the team a boost and give the coaches something to think about as the season continues.

"My goal is just to keep getting better and just keep helping my team out wherever I can," Level said.

By Cody Smith / The Daily Athenaeum

There are two scenarios in which redshirt junior Corey Smith will enter the game for West Virginia this fall. The team hopes he will make his entrance after a touchdown rather than on fourth down.

The kickoff specialist and punter will be busy this fall, doing double duty for the Mountaineers for the first time in his collegiate career. He sees this as more of an opportunity than a hassle.

"It's something I've done, obviously for a while," Smith said of the dual roles. "I've done it in high school and I've still been doing it here. It's something that a lot of people don't like doing because they feel it's too hard of muscle memory to master."

The Musselman High School product was an all-state honoree as both a kicker and punter, breaking a pair of state records en route to earning a scholarship to Alabama, where he spent his freshman season serving limited time at kicker. In 2009, after a year in Tuscaloosa, Smith decided to return closer to home and enrolled at WVU.

Up until last week, Smith had been battling with fellow kicker, junior Tyler Bitancurt, for the starting job. Bitancurt eventually won the battle but, throughout the contest, Smith showed his eagerness to take on more responsibilities in an effort to gain more playing time.

"It helps you stay in the game more, but it feels, not necessarily like you're more a part of the team, but you feel like you make a bigger impact I guess," he said. "As far as an added responsibility, it's just as important for me to put a kickoff where I need to with the right hang as it would be to put a punt where I need to with the right hang or go out and nail a field goal if we need it, so I can't really say (there's) any more emphasis on one thing."

Trying to juggle all the kicking responsibilities may have been a bit too ambitious in the eyes of head coach Dana Holgorsen, who would rather Smith master one aspect of the kicking game rather than focus on all of them.

"I told Corey to quit acting like a kicker and to start focusing on being a punter. Hopefully that will help him. He hasn't been punting poorly, but if he focuses on that, hopefully we'll get a little better," he said.

Smith agrees with Holgorsen about that focus, especially given his multiple roles. Noting is more important than physically kicking the ball than being mentally prepared to do so.

"A lot of people can get off good punts, a lot of people can get off good kicks (and) good kickoffs; in keeping everything separate, it's more mental and focusing on it really, I think, than anything else," Smith said.

This season will be the first in which Smith serves as punter at the collegiate level. Despite not punting in a college game, Smith will draw on his experiences from high school to prosper in this newfound role.

A more prolific offense may limit his punting opportunities, but that void will be supplemented by an increased number of kickoffs. Smith produced eight touchbacks last year, which is twice the number the team had the previous year. At an average of 62.2 yards per kick, Smith's ability to punt the ball deep into opposing territory makes kickoff coverage easier and gives opposing offensives a longer, tougher road to scoring on the Mountaineer defense.

To have a successful season, Smith believes he must routinely display his goal of providing consistent kicking.

"You want to do the same thing day in and day out, and that's what we get known for; that's what coaches want," he said.

If the Mountaineer offense has its way, Smith will be recognized more for his consistent kickoffs rather than his punting prowess.

Bridgeport, W.Va., kicker Connor Kornbrath has verbally committed to the University of Iowa.

Kornbrath, a Prokicker.com alum, selected the Hawkeyes after receiving interest from West Virginia, Pittsburgh and Maryland. Iowa was the first school to offer a scholarship.

"Of all the schools that I've seen, Iowa is No. 1 for everything - coaches, campus, football program," Kornbrath told HawkeyeInsider.com. "I just loved everything about it. They were the No. 1 team that I wanted an offer from. I got it (Friday) so I just went with it."

Kornbrath said that he is solid with Iowa and is done with the recruiting process.

"I'm finished. I'm committed," he said. "I'm done with the other camps that I had scheduled. The (Mountaineers) were up there as one of my top schools but compared to Iowa I'm not interested in going to WVU."

As a junior, Kornbrath led all kickers in the state in scoring with 4.8 points per game. He made seven of 12 field goals, including a school-record 51-yarder and a state playoff record 47-yarder. He also kicked two game-winning field goals.

The 6-foot-6, 210-pound kicker/punter led the state with 19 touchbacks on kickoffs and earned first team All-State, All-Conference first-team kicker, All-region and All-county selections.