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II used to kick a football. I used to kick a lot, actually, day after day, from
sixth grade through junior high and high school, for a while even into college.
Kicking is one of those things a kid can do alone, measuring the results of his
own effort, working out his technique and his frustrations without the false
empathy or open criticism of a well-meaning friend or brother or parent or
coach, each with their own personal version of a measuring stick, and a cold
mental clipboard for keeping score, sometimes for years, sometimes forever.
Competitive sports never really interested me. As a little league shortstop I
spent entire games marveling at the way sand sifted through the webbing of my
ball glove. I believed the seventh grade football coach when he screamed to me
that I didn’t have what it took to move the blocking dummy a goddamned inch,
and that I lacked both the initiative and dazaar to perform at a hunnert-ten
percent. (I also lacked the extra thirty or forty pounds owned by my teammates,
along with whatever self-destructive tendencies they had that made them crash
head first into one another on the coach’s orders.)
It’s not that I failed to appreciate physical activity. I liked to run. I
practiced martial arts forms. I danced. I rode my bicycle. I spent much of my
free time in the woods, climbing rocks and trees, damming creeks, building
habitable shelters. I just didn’t see any reason to compete as a vehicle for
achieving excellence.
Competition meant facing off with another human being, measuring my level of
ability against theirs. This was something that made little sense to me. I guess
I learned early on that there were going to be people who were better than me at
just about anything. Proving that point over and over held no real fascination
for me. On the other hand, finding someone to beat in any kind of competition
made no real sense, either. The outcome was hopelessly rigged: one person felt
terrific, the other defeated. To me, the key to developing a skill of any kind
was to find something I liked to do, and find ways to become better at it, so
long as the process was enjoyable, and challenging.
Technically, I wasn’t really a kicker. I punted the football. This is no small
distinction: Kicking requires a tee, or somebody else to hold the ball for you,
Lucy-style, to your Charlie Brown. Kicking is a structured activity. It requires
preparation and teamwork. You kick to start the game, to open the quarter, to
score extra points after your team makes a touchdown. Kicking is an optimistic,
potentially celebratory function.
Punting is an acknowledgement of failure, an admission of one’s own
inadequacy.
You punt on the fourth down, when your team has screwed up three out of four
chances to move the ball down the field. A punt is a chance to save face, an
attempt to pull yourself out of a hole of your own digging. A last-ditch effort
to make up for multiple past failures. Still, if that’s where you find
yourself, it seems sensible to give as good a showing as you can.
Punting is a solitary activity. No tee. No ball holder. You’re on your own.
Start from a standing position. One, two, three eager steps to build forward
momentum, extend the ball out and away, a few degrees to the left, laces up.
Right hand to hold, left to guide, release with both hands at once, Goldilocks
fashion: Not too soon, not too late.
A well-punted football leaves the foot with a rolling motion, tip pointed upward
at exactly forty-five degrees, spinning along the axis of the spheroid, no
wobble, like a well-thrown pass. The perfect punt has all of these qualities,
and one more: If executed properly, the ball will rise to the apex of its
flight, then flatten its trajectory briefly before tipping over in a seamless
roll, its point rifling along a clean parabolic path to the ground.
A less-than-perfect punt will fail in the rollover phase. The fooball sails up
beautifully, but maintains an up-tilted attitude as gravity begins to coax it
back to earth. Spinning in place, the ball now presents a maximum surface area
to wind resistance, changing instantly from a bullet to a brick. Rather
than describe the maximum symmetrical arc of a parabola, the football stalls in
mid-air, and drops, half way to its intended destination.
A flick of the toe is all it takes to make or ruin an otherwise beautifully
punted football. A slight misstep, a distraction, a slip of the fingers on
release. I spent hours working on my punting technique, dissecting the process,
identifying pitfalls, polishing the steps, timing, position, release,
follow-through. When I was comfortable with the results, I started training
myself to do it left-footed.
This all amounted to wonderful physical conditioning, improved eye-hand
coordination and a tremendous boost to my self-esteem. Once or twice it even
caught the attention of the high school football coaches, who would catch me
practicing on the field hours before a game, or while the team was working out
in the weight room. Fortunately they never took my ability seriously. I was too
small, they said, and, after all, what good was an ankle-taper, anyway?
Only once did I try to punt the ball during a game, in college, on the
intramural squad. My classmates had noticed me practicing one day, executing a
series of seamless, 60- to 75-yard rifled bullets, each ending in a forward
bounce toward the end zone. They recruited me on the spot, handed me a jersey,
put me in a game of sand-lot ball against a rival fraternity.
I took my place well behind our center, caught the snap, stepped forward
rhythmically, and looked up to see a writhing wall of angry college men bearing
down on me, intent on doing me immediate harm. I focused, made contact with the
ball, felt the satisfying arc of energy leave my leg and foot, and send the
football sailing high into the air.
Straight up into the air, as it happened. What might have been another 75-yarder
instead tracked vertically, easily monitored from my flattened position on the
dusty field. A gust of wind cradled the ball at the crest of its narrow arc, and
blew it backwards a full ten yards. The opposing team recovered and scored, amid
howls of laughter from my own side, laced liberally with choice epithets.
No longer the hero, I limped from the field confirmed and strengthened in my
solitary belief that contact sports were misguided adventures at best.
Once every few years my left knee locks up briefly, pops painfully back into
place, and reminds me of the one time when I left my convictions on the
sidelines, and mis-stepped into the arena of athletic competition.
Copyright 2009 Don Stewart
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