University of North Carolina Athletics
Countdown to Kickoff: Kicking It with Connor
August 26, 2005 | Football
Aug. 26, 2005
By Adam Lucas
Contrary to popular belief, the most burning question of Carolina's football training camp doesn't involve backup quarterback, the running game, or ways to improve the Tar Heel defense.
It's this: what exactly is Connor Barth doing after practice?
The kicker from Wilmington is establishing a bit of a Forrest Gump-like following with his traditional post-practice cool-down session. After every practice, most players walk back to Kenan Stadium from the practice field, file down the steps, and go into the locker room.
Not Barth. He usually stops about three-fourths of the way up the lower deck, puts down his pads, and sits for between 15 and 30 minutes. Last year, the routine began to gain favor with his teammates--Donnell Livingston was the first to join him, and then the group swelled to between five and 10 Tar Heels per day.
This year, Ronnie McGill has been Barth's most frequent post-practice companion. The laid-back kicker and the perpetually smiling tailback are a duo reality shows can only dream of. But here's the thing: McGill isn't sure exactly what draws him to those metal Kenan bleachers.
"I don't know why we sit up there at all," the injured tailback said. "Connor used to do it and I just started."
Of course, outsiders were free to speculate. The most frequent guess was that Barth was visualizing his field goals. Maybe, the theory went, he had even foretold his game-winning kick over Miami on the Kenan turf last season.
It would make a great story. But it's not true.
"Everyone thinks I reflect on field goals up there," Barth said. "But I just relax. It's just a place to relax and not worry about anything. There's no rush after practice. We're not going anywhere. I'm kind of laid back."
"Kind of laid back" is an understatement. Remember, this is a player who actually responded in the following manner after nailing a 50-yard field goal during training camp last year: "Dude, I'm stoked."
But that's expected behavior for kickers, who operate right on the borderline of football machismo.
"Their job is very difficult," Jesse Holley says. "I can't kick a 50-yard field goal. But you don't see a kicker in the training room with nicks and bruises. They come out and kick field goals all day and work on their technique all day. Sometimes I wish I could be a kicker, but then I think, `Nah, that'd be boring.'"
"They are extremely important to a football team but they are not what you call the normal type of football player," John Bunting says. "They don't engage and they don't knock people on the ground."
In most cases, Bunting is a big fan of players who knock people on the ground. So it's created an Odd Couple-type situation that his special team responsibility is...the kickers. He meets every day for approximately a half-hour with the kickers, snappers, and holders. It's a give-and-take session. Bunting freely admits he's not the world's foremost kicking expert, and he's solicited player input on such topics as who the kickers prefer as their holder (currently Andrew Wasserman) now that Roger Heinz is likely out for the year. He's also not the gruff old school-type who doesn't talk to kickers. He's not above needling them, as he did Wednesday night when he informed Barth his target area on field goals during a scrimmage was the distance between two soccer goals--which just happened to be no more than a yard apart. Hit the target, get three points. Miss it, no good.
If he's going to begin a new kicker-tutoring era, he's fortunate to start off with solid material. Barth made 14 of 18 field goals and 35 of 37 extra point attempts last year and appears to have solidified the kicker role for the next three seasons.
But one of those misses was a 54-yard attempt against Virginia Tech that cost the Tar Heels an opportunity to tie the game. As it turns out, the miss might have had as much to do with Barth's pregame routine as his in-game routine.
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Countdown to Kickoff: 15 Days
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"Later in the season, towards Virginia Tech, my leg felt pretty shot," Barth says. "I wasn't as strong as I was earlier in the season. College is a much longer season than high school and I didn't manage my kicks well. I would come out a couple hours before the game and kick, and I was kicking a ton before practice. I was a freshman, so I didn't know what I was doing. I learned a lot from it and I've definitely cut down on my kicks."
The change in his routine began with last Saturday's scrimmage, when the Tar Heels went through their typical pregame warm-ups. Barth kicked just 15 field goals and five kickoffs before the session started and said his leg felt stronger during play.
It's those kickoffs where the Wilmington native wanted to make some improvement. He spent the summer working on strength and flexibility to try and improve his distance and entered camp battling Lane Clemmons for the kickoff job. Deeper kickoffs isn't just a vanity exercise. It's an important way to be able to pin opponents in their own territory, thereby making the job of the defense a little easier.
"Over the summer I was hitting them 10 yards deep and really focusing on that," Barth said. "I want to win that job. Kickoffs are a totally different motion than field goals and it's all about hip explosion. I've been working on that and trying to extend more to the ball. You want to have that hurdle motion through the ball."
That's wisdom he and Bunting have discussed over the past two weeks of training camp. It turns out the long-haired kicker and the grizzled linebacker can get along just fine--and what's more, Bunting (who isn't as uneducated on the topic as he pretends to be, as he spent significant time this summer talking to special teams coaches and former Tar Heel kicker Jeff Reed) seems to have some insight into the mentality of a kicker.
"I look at them just like good golfers," the head coach said. "They have to have a tremendous power of concentration. They have to kick it and make it and feel good and move on to the next one. And they have to kick it and miss it and still feel good and move on to the next one."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and his book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about Going Home Again, click here.
