How to Become a Football Kicker: From Zero to the Roster

The honest good news: kicker is the most accessible position in football. You do not need size, you do not need to have played since childhood, and you do not need to be fast. Plenty of kickers come from soccer and make a varsity roster within a season or two.

The honest hard part: most teams carry one kicker. The position is accessible but the roster spots are few, and reliability matters more than raw talent.

Who Can Become a Kicker

Kicking rewards a genuinely unusual mix of traits, and most of them are trainable.

• Soccer players. The single most common background. The striking motion transfers directly, and soccer-style kicking is what essentially every modern kicker uses.
• Late starters. Unlike most positions, you can start at 15 or 16 and still be competitive. The skill is technical rather than developmental.
• Smaller athletes. Size is close to irrelevant. Leg speed and technique matter; body mass does not.
• Detail-focused people. Kicking rewards obsessive repeatability more than athleticism.
• People who handle pressure. This is the real filter. The physical skill is learnable; performing it with a game on the line is what separates kickers.

You do not need to be an athlete to start kicking. You need to be someone who will hit the same twenty-five kicks, the same way, three times a week, for a year.

Your First 90 Days

1. Get a tee and a ball. That is the entire barrier to entry. Confirm your league’s legal tee height first — see our rules guide.
2. Learn the motion, not the distance. Spend your first month at 20 yards. Our beginner drills guide gives you a full eight-week structure.
3. Film yourself weekly. Phone on the ground behind your plant foot. You cannot feel your own approach angle; you can see it.
4. Build the habit before the range. Three sessions a week for three months beats occasional heroic sessions.
5. Start tracking immediately. Make percentage at a fixed distance is your progress metric, not how far you can boot it.
6. Tell the coach you are interested. Do this early, not once you are good. Many programs are actively short of kickers.

Getting on the Team

The path differs by where you are starting.

What to say to a coach

Keep it brief and specific. Something like: “I’ve been training as a kicker for six months, I’m consistent from 30 yards, and I’d like to compete for the job. Can I show you?”

That sentence does three useful things: it shows you have already put in work, it gives a concrete standard, and it asks for a specific next step rather than a favour.

What Coaches Actually Look For

Kickers often train for the wrong thing because they assume distance is the currency. It usually is not.

1. Consistency above everything. A kicker who makes 85% from 30 yards is more valuable than one who occasionally hits 50 and misses 40% of routine attempts.
2. Reliability under pressure. Can you do it when it matters? This is what coaches are really assessing.
3. Coachability. Specialists who take feedback well get more attention and more reps.
4. Kickoff ability. A kicker who can also handle kickoffs is worth substantially more to a roster.
5. Availability. Turning up to every session, on time, prepared.
6. Range — last. It matters, but only once the above are established.

Rough Benchmarks by Level

These are general orientation points, not official standards — they vary widely by program, region and season.

Rather than chasing a number, work out what your own program needs and aim to be clearly reliable at that distance before extending.

How Recruiting Works for Kickers

Specialist recruiting runs differently from other positions, and understanding that saves a lot of wasted effort.

Camps matter more than for most positions

Coaches rarely scout kickers at games, because you might attempt two kicks all night. Specialist camps and combines are where kickers get seen and where measurable results get recorded.

Film needs to be specialist film

Game highlights are less useful than a dedicated kicking reel showing consistent technique from multiple angles at known distances.

Start earlier than you think

Junior year is when most kicker recruiting activity begins. Waiting until senior year means most opportunities have already been allocated.

Preferred walk-on is a real path

Many college kickers arrive as walk-ons rather than on scholarship. It is a legitimate route and worth pursuing.

Building a Kicking Film

1. Shoot from two angles. Behind the plant foot and side-on. Both show things the other hides.
2. Show the whole kick. Approach through follow-through, uncut. Coaches want to see mechanics, not just the ball going through.
3. Label distances on screen. A kick with no distance marker tells a coach nothing.
4. Include kickoffs with hangtime times. This is a genuine differentiator and few kickers include it.
5. Show misses too, occasionally. A film of nothing but makes reads as edited. Consistency across a sequence is more convincing.
6. Keep it short. Two to three minutes. Best material first.

The Mental Side

Kicking is unusually psychological. You sit out most of the game, then do one high-stakes thing in front of everyone, and the result is unambiguous.

• Build a routine. A short, consistent pre-kick sequence gives your nervous system something familiar in unfamiliar moments.
• Practise pressure deliberately. End every session with one attempt that “counts.” It feels silly for two sessions, then it starts working.
• Separate process from outcome. You control your approach, plant and contact. You do not control wind or a bad snap. Judge yourself on the first set.
• Have a reset. Decide in advance what you do after a miss — a breath, a phrase, a physical action. Kickers who ruminate miss the next one too.
• Expect to miss. Every kicker at every level misses. The job is not perfection; it is returning to baseline quickly.

Mistakes That Hold People Back

Frequently Asked Questions

A Realistic First-Season Timeline

Knowing what normal progress looks like stops you quitting during the phase where nothing appears to be happening.

Nothing about that timeline requires exceptional athleticism. It requires turning up three times a week for six months, which is a far rarer quality than talent.

What to Do If Your School Has No Kicker

This is more common than people assume, and it is an opportunity rather than an obstacle.

1. Email or speak to the head coach before pre-season. Not during. Coaches are overwhelmed once camp starts; in spring or summer they have time to consider you.
2. Lead with what you can already do. “I’m consistent from 30 yards” is concrete. “I’d like to try kicking” is not.
3. Offer to show them. Ask for ten minutes before or after a session. Most coaches will grant that.
4. Bring your own equipment. Turning up with a tee and a ball signals you are already training rather than asking to be taught.
5. Be prepared to also handle kickoffs. A player who can do both is far more attractive to a thin roster.

Balancing Kicking With Other Sports

Most young kickers play something else, and that is usually an advantage rather than a conflict.

• Soccer is close to ideal. It maintains exactly the leg speed, striking mechanics and single-leg conditioning that kicking depends on. Many kickers play both throughout high school.
• Watch total leg load. Soccer and kicking both hammer the same tissue. If you are doing both at volume, mobility work and rest days become more important, not less.
• Talk to both coaches early. Scheduling conflicts are solvable in June and are a crisis in September.
• Track kicks separately from soccer. Do not assume soccer touches count as kicking practice — the motions differ enough that they do not substitute.

Handling the Mental Side Early

New kickers usually underestimate this and then get blindsided by it in their first real game situation.

• Build the routine before you need it. A short, identical pre-kick sequence gives your nervous system something familiar when the situation is not. Establish it in practice from week one, not the night before a game.
• Expect your first game kick to feel completely different. Practice does not replicate a crowd, a rush, or consequence. That gap is normal and it narrows with exposure.
• Decide your reset in advance. What exactly do you do after a miss? A breath, a phrase, adjusting a glove. Kickers who have not pre-decided tend to ruminate, and rumination costs the next kick.
• Accept that you will miss. Every kicker at every level misses. The job is not perfection; it is returning to baseline quickly enough that the next one is unaffected.
• Judge yourself on process. You control approach, plant and contact. You do not control wind, a poor snap, or a bad bounce.

Your First Month, Step by Step

If you are starting from nothing, here is exactly what to do.

1. Week 1. Buy a tee at your league’s legal height and a correctly sized ball. Learn your plant foot. Three sessions of form work only, at 20 yards, roughly 20 kicks each.
2. Week 2. Same three sessions. Add the cone plant drill — 20 approaches landing on a cone, no ball. Start filming one session from behind.
3. Week 3. Introduce the 20-yard groove drill: 30 kicks, identical setup, tracking makes. This is your baseline number.
4. Week 4. Add angles. Three kicks each from five positions across the field. Tell your coach you are training and would like to compete for the job.

Four weeks, twelve sessions, roughly 300 kicks. That is enough to know whether you enjoy it and enough to have something concrete to show a coach. Our beginner drills guide extends this into a full eight-week programme.

Common Questions From Parents

If you are a parent supporting a child who wants to kick, a few things are worth knowing.

• The entry cost is genuinely low. A tee and a correctly sized ball is a complete starter setup. There is no expensive equipment barrier the way there is in some sports.
• It is one of the safest positions on the field. Kickers take far less contact than any other player, and the main injury risk is muscular rather than collision-related — largely preventable with a proper warm-up.
• Late starts are genuinely viable. Unlike most positions, a child taking this up at 14 or 15 is not years behind. The skill is technical rather than developmental.
• Consistency of practice matters more than talent. Three short sessions a week beats occasional long ones, and that is a habit you can help build.
• Ask the league about kickoffs. Some youth organisations have modified or removed them for younger age groups, which changes what equipment is needed.

The Honest Summary

Kicker is the most accessible position in football and one of the hardest to hold. Accessible because you need no size, no speed, and no childhood head start — a motivated 15-year-old from soccer can be competitive within a season. Hard to hold because most teams carry one, and the job is judged on consistency in moments where everyone is watching.

The path in is unglamorous and reliable: buy a tee, train three times a week, spend your first month at short range, film yourself, track your make percentage, tell your coach early, and learn kickoffs as well as field goals. Do that for six months and you will be a genuine candidate. Do it for two years and you will be good.

What stops most people is not talent. It is that the first two months feel unproductive, and they stop before the improvement becomes visible.

Start this week rather than next season. The barrier is a tee, a ball, and three hours a week — and the position rewards persistence more than it rewards natural ability.

The position is waiting for anyone willing to do the boring, repeatable work.

Keep Going

Benchmarks and recruiting timelines in this guide are general orientation and vary by program, region and season. Confirm specifics with your own coach or target programs.