Tricks of the Trade
An article published in the Fairfax Journal on August 16, 2002
Written by Joe Ferraro, a Journal staff writer
Reprinted with permission.

As he sat in Mike Ditka's Halas Hall office in Lake Forest, Ill., receiving the painful news no NFL player likes hearing, Bill Renner thought the criticism the Chicago Bears head coach gave him might be helpful - only if there was some reasoning behind it.

Much to his dismay, Ditka didn't provide it.

It was August of 1984, and Renner thought he had punted reasonably well for five and one-half weeks at the Bears training camp. Yet ehre he was, fact to face with Ditka, who sat comfortably on a cush, brown leather chair behind a spacious desk. The conversation between Ditka and Renner, much like other conversations involving a player getting cut, was very brief.

"Bill, you did a great job," Ditaka said. "You can punt well, you can punt in this league, but you can't turn the ball like that. It's turned in too much."

"But Coach, I was punting consistent," asked Renner, who then asked Ditka for the reasoning behind his theory.

Renner completed a thesis on punting at Virginia Tech a year earlier, but yearned for more knowledge about a skill few people knew anything about.

"I don't know why you can't turn the ball I, I just know you can't," Ditka replied. "Be consistent doing it. Thank you very much. God luck."

With that, Renner left Ditka's office, with nobody to turn to and feeling as if he was stranded on an island. He'd felt this way before several times. In 1980, Renner suffered his fifth concussion at Virginia Tech when he played wingback, getting drilled in the middle of the field while running a seam route. So Hokie doctors and coaches restricted Renner to punting and escorted him to an almost-empty practice field. There, he and other punters and kickers practiced on their own, with no coaches offering advice or help.

It did not make sense to Renner. When he was younger, coaches told him how to exactly swing a baseball bat or shoot a basketball - and why. In football, coaches can quickly rattle off the proper stance for a wide receiver: put your inside foot up, put your back foot just behind the heel of the inside foot and put your arms in fighting position.

How come nobody could give him specific instructions for punting a football, Renner wondered. No one could tell him where his fingers should be with respect to the seams of the football. No one gave him pointers on how to use the power in this plant leg.

But if he couldn't get that information from anybody else, he knew he'd better learn on his own.

Eighteen years later, Renner, now the head football coach at West Springfield High School, is in Blacksburg, standing on one of the Virginia Tech football team's two practice fields behind Lane Stadium and overseeing his 4th Down Sports kicking and punting camp.

On an overcast July day, a group of high school students practiced punting, getting tips from a group of instructors and collectively making a series of thumping noises that sounded like fireworks being set off on Independence Day. Among the instructors are former Boston College and West Springfield alum Jason Malecki and Northwestern University senior kicker David Wasielewski, who also punted his freshman year at Florida under current Redskins coach Steve Spurrier.

On the other practice field, another group worked on kicking drills, receiving instruction from people like former Buffalo Bills and Virginia Tech kicker Shayne Grahan, and former All-American kicker Paul Woodside.

All the while, Renner discusses the years of frustration he experienced before getting off his first NFL punt with the Green Bay Packers in 1986.

"After I went through my experiences and had my stints, I really don't want other people to go through what I went through," he said.

That's why Renner, with the help of former Virginia Tech kicker Tom Taricani, formed the organization called 4th Down Specialists in 1986 and started offering instruction on punting and kicking. Renner and his instructors worked at the Mark Moseley Kicking Camps from 1989-1994 before working independently once again under 4th Down Sports in 1995.

A total of 111 students (83 kickers, 28 punters), all between the ages of 10 and 18, paid $455 and showed up at the Virginia Tech camp - the fifth of five kicking and punting camps offered across the country by 4th Down Sports this summer (2002).

Renner, the author of the book Kicking the Football, knows the margin for error is small for kickers and punters hoping to play college and professional football. He hopes his camp will make their journey easier than his.

What if…..

Woodside, one of 10 players after Buffalo's kicking jot in 1985, wished he had the kind of instruction the students attending the 4th Down Sports camp have. Woodside was one of the last players cut at Buffalo's training camp, as Jefferson High School alum Scott Norwood, who previously played in the USFL before the camp, got the job. When Woodside sought instruction about kicking as a 14-year-old, he found the teaching very basic and didn't learn much. Instructors gave him general tips, like keeping your head down when you kick. And when Woodside asked why things were done a certain way, he didn't get a satisfactory answer.

"They couldn't tell you why the ball traveled as it does," said Woodside. "They couldn't tell you why you fell off (during a kick).

"If you challenged them, they have to keep this Wizard of Oz behind the curtain like they're some quasimoto big figure out there, when the truth is it's a façade, that they don't know the answer and they have to deep you at arm's length."

So when he had problems with his kicking, Woodside didn't have a remedy…except exerting more energy.

"Usually, when you didn't kick well, in order to fix it, you'll kick harder or you'll kick more," he said.

That's why Woodside said he didn't really learn how to kick until he stumbled upon one of Renner's camps in the early 1990's, when Renner brought him on board as an instructor.

"Doing these camps, all of a sudden, I can look back and see all the mistakes I made," Woodside said. "God had other ideas for my life, and that's fine. It's one of those things, if I knew then what I know now, things would have been different."

Growing up, Renner's luck finding help wasn't much better.

A student at Lee High School (Springfield, VA) his junior and senior year, Renner spent his summers playing baseball or basketball. None of his teachers or coaches directed him to a camp where he could refine his skills.

As he looks back on his high school years, that really doesn't surprise him considering tryouts for kickers and punters at area high schools involved little or not coaching.

"It was a skill where you handed everybody the ball on the team and then see who could do it, and that guy did it," Renner said. "It wasn't a case of, 'Well, go to this guy, and he'll help you get better.'"

If Renner got any tips, he found many of them "ludicrous." When Renner tried out for the Bears, a position coach believed a punter lost power if one leg crossed the other as he took steps before the punt. So the coach ran a drill in which punters performed with a fire hose on the ground in between their legs. Since players wore cleats, they slipped and risked injury if they stepped on the hose.

"So that as we walked, we had to walk as if we had stick up our rear end," said Renner, who competed with former Packer Ray Stacowicz and former Southern Methodist University punter Eric Kaffes. Ditka cut all three, and the Bears signed Dave Finzer, a punter on the San Diego Chargers roster. "That was ludicrous because your feet crossing over really doesn't negatively affect your leg drive or power into the ball. All three of us punted terrible on that drill."

"At least he was trying to help, but it kind of sent the message to me that people didn't know what to do to help."

However, Renner found some of the suggestions helpful and they propelled him to gain more knowledge. At Virginia Tech, defensive back coach Steve Bernstein noticed Renner's elbow stuck out too much. Renner later found out keeping your drop arm elbow in locks the ball in the right vertical plane - something he teaches at his camp.

Then after Ditka gave him his input, a thought crept into his mind: There could be a teachable method for punting a football.

"Those two tidbits started me to think, 'Wow, maybe there is a technique,'" Renner said.

After being cut by the Bears, Renner returned to Virginia Tech and served as a graduate assistant - he did the same in 1983, after he got cut by the Minnesota Vikings.

In Blacksburg, Renner further studied the skill of punting by filming himself and performed numerous experiments. During one of them, he proved Ditka's theory correct.

He discovered that if the nose of the ball is turned in too much it travels toward one side of the field before curving toward the middle of the field. When the ball does this, according to Renner, the path it travels is longer and makes it harder to punt a spiral than if the nose was pointed straighter.

"In the back of my mind, I knew if I wasn't going to play, I was going to coach," said Renner, who after being one of the last four players cut by Green Bay in training camp in 1986, was signed by the Packers after starter Don Bracken sustained an injury with three games left in the season. "This topic of how do you teach punting kept eating at me because nobody could teach me."

"There has to be some curriculum, that you can teach this and coach this."

So he came up with one.

Specific Instruction

Most of the students attending their first 4th Down Sports camp don't know how involved the instruction is. Herndon High School's Dan Loughnane went to his third such camnp in two years at Virginia Tech.

When the senior came to his first camp, he figured he's spend the whole day blasting away football after football. He found out he was wrong.

So did Johnny Ayers, a punter on Madison High School's football team. Ayers, attending his first 4th Down Sports camp at Virginia Tech, quickly found out he'd be doing much more when he and others started camp by working on" ball drops" for 45 minutes. The camper perform the drill with the goal of having ht ball parallel to the ground before striking it.

"I came down her last year (for the first time), and it improved me 100 times fold," Loughanane says, "going from just taking the ball and kicking it to actually having form and kicking it."

"At the beginning of camp, you're kicking 30-yard balls. By the end of the camp you're kicking 40 and 50. I expected to learn, but not as much."

Ayers, who had worked with former West Virginia Wesleyan punter Dean Marsden before attending the camp, just found out hat most of the power on a punt comes from the non-kicking leg. He learned that punters push off the plant leg, much like pitchers pushing off a mound in baseball, to transfer energy during the kick."

"All the instructors know exactly what they are talking about," Ayers said. "They all follow the same guidelines, they all teach the same exact thing. That really helps, not getting four different things told to you."

Westfield High School senior kicker Dan Murphy said friends poked fun at him after returning from his first 4th Down Sports kicking camp last year. They questioned how much Murphy learned at the camp, and he responded by saying he could give them "an inch-by-inch, step-by-step analysis on how to exactly kick a football."

With all the repetition Murphy go over three 4th Down Sports camps, he can easily identify the mistakes he makes when his kicks aren't good ones.

"In games or pregame, I'll be kicking, and I'll shank one wide right," Murphy said. "Coach says, 'Do you know why you did that?" He doesn't know, but I know I need to get my hips around. Or I would need to lock my ankle."

Some of the kicking technique Murphy discussed was emphasized during the second day of the four-day camp, when cam p instructors set up eight stations that broke down a kicker's "swing" - everything from driving your leg backs so it almost touches your rear at the beginning of the kick to finishing high and strong after kicking the ball.

At the "no-step" station, kickers learn the must strike the ball with the metatarsus in their foot. In the "plant step" station, an instructor warns that the ball likely will be pulled to the left if the plant foot lands well ahead of the ball. At another station, another instructor talks about hip rotation, emphasizing the snapping of the hips into the ball and warning against over-rotating before striking the ball.

The instruction is so precise that all of the kickers, including instructor Steve Scaldaferri, know even a small margin of error might make a field goal attempt unsuccessful. Scaldaferri, a 1997 Chantilly High School graduate, helped the Chargers win a Group AAA state football title in 1996. He didn't start kicking until that senior year, but Scaldaferri later kicked at Kentucky for and entire season and part of another.

"You can be off an either of an inc, and it will throw off everything," said Scaldaferri.

Showcasing Talent

Renner doesn't become too enamored with distance as he does with form and consistency. That's why he believes Loughnane was one of the best punters at the Virginia Tech camp.

Loughnane got an opportunity to display his talent in front of Virginia Tech head football coach Frank Beamer and Hokies defensive coordinator Bud Foster. Before the camp started, Beamer asked Renner to hand pick the best punters and kickers. Renner pulled out two punters and five kickers. On the third day of camp, they performed as Beamer and Foster looked on.

Loughnane didn't punt as well as he'd like. When Renner barked out, "Last on" on his fifth and final punt, he let loose a wobbly kick that traveled only 35 yards. But Loughnane, intent on finishing strong, snuck in one last effort, and he made good on it. Loughnane boomed a high spiral that went 55 yards and Foster noticed.

"He got that one," Foster said.

"It was nerve-wracking," Loughnane said of punting in front of Virginia Tech's coaches. "When you're kicking, you have to stay focused on what you're doing."

"I shanked most of my balls I only hit one or two of them good. In order to play for a D-1 team like (Virginia Tech), you have to hit every ball right."

The kickers and punters who performed in front of Beamer didn't know he was showing up until he arrived. Renner and the other instructors never told them because they sress kicking well for themselves, not for anybody else.

"The adrenaline's pumping, and I'm like, 'Wods, I don't want to screw up,'" said Murphy.

Murphy thought he fared well when he and the four other kicker, including Oakton High School's Matt Lewis, kicked off in front of Beamer. The kickoffs traveled from sideline to sideline on one of the practice fields. Lewis held the ball on the tee for Murphy and placed on one of the yard marker that stretched across the width of the practice field. Murphy's first kick landed not too far away from the end of the yard marker where Lewis had held the ball, an indication the kick was straight. Lewis slapped hands with Murphy after that first attempt.

"My first one was perfectly down the line," Murphy said. "The two following were pretty decent, as well. I was pretty impressed with myself."

Fitting In

Often enough, punters and kickers don't earn much respect in football because they don't spend the amount of time or energy other position players do. So, aside from the rigorous instruction, Renner and his instructors preach mental toughness with the campers.

Several times, Renner heard derogatory comments made toward punters and kickers during his short professional career. He tells the campers they shouldn't make an effort defending themselves, knowing an argument likely won't change a critic's mind.

"All the words you have to give them, they're just not going to have an effect," Renner said.

However, Rnner knows punters and kickers must stand up for themselves when they get harassed and "tested" by other NFL players.

At Chicago's training camp, players concluded the final session of the day by running wind sprints across the width of one of the practice fields. Some of the linemen, having grinded through contact drills weren't running at full speed. That didn't stop Renner from doing so.

Defensive lineman Dan Hampton, Recently inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, told Renner to slow down. He didn't listen. So just before Renner completed one of his wind sprints, Hampton blocked his path to the sideline and got in his face.

"Hey, man, what are you trying to do, show us up," Hampton said.

"I'm not trying to do nothing but run as fast as I can run," Renner said. "You train how you want to train, I train how I want to train."

Renner's words silenced Hampton.

"He had that look of, 'All right cool,'" Renner recalls. "From then on, there were no problems with anybody."

Scaldaferri believes some kickers, thinking they're "just a kicker," bring such abuse upon themselves by isolating themselves from other players. So he encourages interaction with the linemen and the linebackers.

Most importantly, he stresses making a good first impression by performing well on the field. Scaldaferri said he caught the eyes of Kentucky players with exceptional kickoffs.

"After I went out the first day, I started kicking off, and a couple of my balls were going out the back of the end zone," Scaldaferri recalls. "Then they're like, 'Man that kicker's good.' After that, the ice is broken."

Lean On Me

Even though campers gather their gear and head home after the last day of a 4th Down Sports camp, instructors make them selves available to them afterward.

Scaldaferri and Graham attended 4th Down Sports camps before they went to college, and they still contact kicking instructor Fred Pinciaro when they need help.

Pinciaro's house - which includes more than six acres of land - became a home for Graham after the former Hokie couldn't find a job after tryouts with Cleveland, Tennessee and New Orleans in 2000. He needed work on his kickoffs, so he spent three months at Pinciaro's house doing it. At the camp, Pinciaro, an assistant coach at Chantilly from 1994-1997 and at Jefferson High School in 1998, said three other kickers were visiting soon to practice.

"I run a bed-and-breakfast at my house," Pinciaro joked.

Brian Morton, who helped the Berlin Thunder win a championship for NFL Europe last year, attended the camp so he could work with Renner on his punting before attending the Minnesota Vikings training camp.

Woodside admires Renner because of the latter's ability to form strong relationships with his students and show them a genuine interest about their careers.

Throughout the camp, Renner scolded Morton several times for throwing his shoulders back - doing so results in the punter popping the ball straight up in the air instead of driving it down the field. But Morton knows Renner gets on him because he wants him to succeed.

"I get yelld at as much today as I did the summer before my sophomore year," Morton said during the Virginia Tech camp. "I'm 100 times better than what I was, but I'm still making mistakes. Coach Renner wants to see me do well."

Morton and the punting instructors at the camp - Malecki, Wasielewski, and Penn State freshman Jeremy Kapinos - participated in a punting competion at the camp, with Rnner making up drills. Renner knows punters often try "killing" the ball in order to get more distance. But he believes the distance will come if punters consistently come through with the proper technique.

During one drill in which the punters were required to get off punts in 1.35 seconds or less, Renner didn't like Kapinos' form on one attempt.

"Why do you thro technique out the window when you're in a competition?", Renner asked Kapinos, a 2002 West Springfield graduate.

Kapinos corrected the mistake on his next attempt, and his punt traveled more than 50 yards.

"See, whay did you subject us to all that garbage (on the previous attempt?)," Renner told Kapinos.

The 2002 West Springfield graduate let loose another solid punt on his last attepmo. Again, Renner showed he cared - in his own special way.

"If you don't punt like that at Penn State, don't ever call me," Renner said.

Grham knows there's always room for improvement with his kicking. That's why he wants campers looking at him as "Camper Graham" instead of a kicking aficionado.

Scaldaferri enjoys being a mentor and an adviser, knowing how hard it is making the NFL as a kicker. Both he and Graham tell campers that if they wan to pursue a career in kicking, the have to be serious now, especially considering kickers have little margin for error.

Scaldaferri knows a running back can run through the wrong hole on the offensive line three or four times during a training camp and not get penalized severely. On the other hand, a kicker who misses two or three consecutive field goals in a tryout likely won't make the team.

Just ask Graham, who was cut by Seattle last year before catching on with "Buffalo at the tail end of the season. The Bills then released him at the end of the season after they signed Mike Hollis. On Monday, Graham, a member of the Seahawks practice squad, was released - four days after he missed a 31-yard field goal in a 28-10 loss to Indianapolis in an exhibition game.

Malecki played in two exhibition game for Tampa Bay last year, but Renner said pro teams labeled him as inconsistent because he got off two short punts - one in each of the two games.

Scaldaferri said he performed well at a tryout with the Bills in late June, but hasn't been contacted by an NFL team since.

"It's hard, and people that start out at your age are the ones that make it," Scaldaferri tells the campers.

"Growing up, a lot of these guys have a little bit of natural ability and skill," says Graham, who kept Virginia Tech undefeated during the regular season by kicking a game-winning field goal at West Virginia. As a freshman in high school, he kicked a game-winner against Robinson in the 1992 state semifinals for eventual state champion Pulaski County. "Ability will only take you so far. You have to develop it."

The camp provides a support system, making each camper know there's someone to lean on. So if someone wants to know why their punts are suddenly going short, or why they're pulling their field goals to the left, there's a staff member there to help out. They won't be left out in the cold, like Renner was years ago.

It's a luxury Renner likes providing aspiring kickers and punters, knowing he sat in bed many nights, wondering why he had punted well one day and then poorly the next.

"I don't want anyone to go through the trial and error, and get those 'I don't know,' reponses," Renner said. " I want to fill that vacuum with regard to this skill in football."