Cedarburg Camp: Aim Small Miss Small

We just completed our third camp of the year in beautiful Cedarburg, Wisconsin on yet another windy day. The dozen campers who attended, primarily from Southeastern Wisconsin, were a wide range of ages, sizes and skill levels.  This is normal for Mike Farley’s Kickers Camp.  We attract the kids who really want to contribute to their high school team’s success this Fall (instead of worrying about a scholarship at the end of the season).

We think this is the way it should be.  When so few full scholarships are available to high school kicking specialists, it’s disingenuous to push “get a scholarship” on an athlete.  We recommend being one of the 7% of all high school football players who go on to simply PLAY college football. And typically, performance goes up because the player is not focused on the stats, but on helping his/her team win the game.

“Aim Small Miss Small”
That’s a phrase we use a lot… meaning, don’t just kick to make a field goal, but pick out a very small target beyond the posts to kick.  If it stays on that line, you know the kick is good.  Too many kicker lazily kick towards a generous target only to find that they are always pushing the boundaries of the goal post.

Post & Sideline Drills:
In our post-Eau Claire camp blog, we discussed these two drills.  Very effective in aiming small and missing small.  Read more here about these drills >

Punting field goals:
We like using a field goal style drill to help focus punting accuracy by attempting to put the ball between the posts on a punt.  This is done typically by setting up around the 25 yard line and simply putting it through the posts. Huge hits that wander away are “no good”.  This is akin to a game time punter nailing a great punt, but placing it poorly into the wrong part of the field, setting up a big return.  All the yardage gained from the boot was lost to a good punt return.  We want to see our punters in high school net 35 yards.

Young Kickers:
Most of our kickers are sophomores, juniors and seniors in high school… but we get a few who are younger.  If you’re interested in attending one of our camps, we say you should be “13 to 18” years in age… but if you can make a 25 yard field goal, you can come to camp. However, some kids will feel intimidated by the older and more proficient kickers (we have some kids who may be All-State this year), but our atmosphere is always positive.  And if you ever doubted it — in Cedarburg, we had a 12 year old camper, Jax Knoeck (Peace Lutheran) who did a great job of keeping up with the “big boys”.

Take a look, he’s the third camper to kick…