For the past 17 years of my life, I have solely been a distant observer of all things sports-related—unless we count the one soccer season I participated in during third grade. I never really had an interest in learning more about all the sports that are out there. Consequently, I have been oblivious to the entire athletic world. Yet, on the rare occasions when my friends and I go to Westview and professional sporting games, we always joked, “How hard could that really be?” Obviously, these players have a long time commitment to their sport but, as a bystander, it’s hard to truly understand the extent of each athlete’s skill level. As this year is my senior year and I will be working on The Nexus as the sports editor, I thought I would put myself out there and test out the question of “how hard could it really be?” to see if a novice like me can learn some of the skills that Westview student-athletes demonstrate.
For this issue, I decided to start out with the most popular fall sport: football. As tackling was out of the question, and throwing a football didn’t seem too exciting since I’ve somewhat learned how in P.E. class, I decided to try to kick a field goal. My initial assumption is that very few students here have ever tried to kick a football through a goalpost. To help me with this undertaking, I met up with Aiden Bibler (12), who has been a kicker since his sophomore year. In theory, this seemed like a good idea, but I will never forget the anxiety I had walking onto the field.
As Bibler was setting up the football kicking tee, I kept looking up at the goal post thinking how much more imposing it looks when you’re standing right in front of it versus when you’re up in the bleachers. Then, when I saw Bibler actually kick the ball over the post, I knew right then that there was no way I was going to be able to kick it anywhere near that far. But, trying to keep my attitude positive, I listened to Bibler’s advice. I followed in his demonstrated steps, I took a deep breath, and when my foot swung to kick the ball. I’m pretty sure my foot made contact with more grass than the ball as it left the tee and hobbled a few feet across the grass. Unfortunately, my third-grade soccer experience did not pay off as I hoped it would. When I tried to kick the ball a second time, the ball went up probably one entire foot into the air. After that, I knew this was definitely not for me.
When I told myself that I was going to learn how to kick a field goal, it seemed pretty easy. However, it was much more difficult than I anticipated. Bibler told me that the farthest he’s been able to kick the ball is at the 60-yard line, which he was able to do after one year of experience. He also said that the team practices for around 15 hours a week, starting well before school starts to train for the season.
“You have to be pretty focused because one little thing can mess up the kick,” Bibler said. “I think a lot of it takes patience and a lot of work to be able to perfect it. The timing has to be down, and you have to memorize your steps.”
So the next time you watch a football game, and Bibler kicks it through the goalpost, please trust me when I say that it is much harder than it looks.
