Punting school boosts Australian province in college football

George Schroeder | USA TODAY Sports

The idea seemed iffy, considering Jordan Berry's passing skills are admittedly substandard. With his arm, anyway. But with his leg?

"If I wanted to, I could probably punt it 35-50 yards, very low to the ground, and hit a target," Berry said.

Back home in Australia, those types of kicks are known as "torpedoes." So a 15-yard line drive to a waiting receiver was a simple proposition. Which is just how it looked Sept. 21, when Eastern Kentucky surprised rival Morehead State. Berry, a senior, took the snap and executed a short rugby-style punt to defensive back Trey Thomas, who caught the ball behind the line of scrimmage, then ran for a first down.

They called it a punt screen pass. Nathan Chapman just calls it progress, perhaps the most vivid example to date of his plans for an Australian invasion of American football.

Berry was a pupil at ProKick Australia, the training program founded by Chapman. So was Arkansas junior Sam Irwin-Hill. Ohio State's Cameron Johnston. LSU's Jamie Keehn. The list keeps going, and growing, almost two dozen players at several levels of American college football, from junior college through FBS.

"We're uncommon punters," Irwin-Hill says — and with the accent and several casual references to "the gridiron," it's obvious something's not ordinary. "We can come in and sort of spice things up."

Most of the Australians are ambidextrous. They're apt to punt rugby-style, rolling either left or right. All of them, Chapman says, could execute the punt pass like Berry did, that their naturally grown skills translate easily to a specialty position in a foreign sport.

"The skill level for us to do that," Chapman says, "would be literally like (Americans) going and throwing a baseball to your son, (putting the throw) in the glove. It's 'Aussie' rules 101, first lesson. It's not that hard to do."

And if the entire idea seems ambitious, it might only just be getting started.

"There's countless guys (in Australia) that can punt well enough to play at a high level of American football," Berry says.

It isn't a completely new phenomenon. Darren Bennett set franchise records in a nine-year stint with the San Diego Chargers, and was named to the NFL's all-decade team for the 1990s. A few years back, Brad Wing gained a cult following while punting for LSU. But Bennett's success was largely self-taught. Wing played high-school football as an exchange student in the United States. Formal training in punting — and with it, an attempt to build a pipeline to U.S. colleges — didn't come until Chapman came along.

Like Bennett, Chapman is a former Australian Football League player — and that's Australian Rules Football. He tried punting in 2004, signing a contract and participating in training camp with the Green Bay Packers before being cut. After returning home to Melbourne, he founded ProKick Australia.

Chapman believes when compared to the typical American punter, the Aussies' skill set, developed by a lifetime of kicking rather than throwing balls around, provides inherent advantages, including apparently effortless power and uncanny precision, even when kicking on the run.

"At the drop of a hat, any of the guys could do any of the rollout rugby punts and kick it down the field," he says. "They can kick it over their shoulder around the corner and be pretty accurate with it."

Teenagers who are interested in American-style punting pay up to $8,000 for training that lasts 12-15 months. An entrance requirement is the ability to punt 40 yards with a 4.5-second hang time. Using pitching machines to simulate snaps and wearing equipment including helmets and shoulder pads, they begin by learning to kick a spiral rather than end-over-end, then progress to countless other nuances.

"We have to retrain them and get their muscle memory thinking differently," he said.

Once that happens, Chapman claims 90% of his pupils will earn a scholarship at some level of American college football. Irwin-Hill's story is typical. He grew up in Bendigo, Australia, playing soccer and then Australian rules football. When the local newspaper profiled Chapman, who is also from Bendigo, Irwin-Hill was intrigued. At 19, he began training with ProKick Australia, then earned a roster spot at City College of San Francisco. As a junior this season at Arkansas, he's averaging 44.0 yards, which ranks 15th among FBS punters.

"That's the ultimate goal right now," says Irwin-Hill of the NFL. "One more year here, and then we'll give it a crack."

Tom Hornsey, a Memphis senior from Geelong, Victoria, Australia, who is also a ProKick Australia graduate, ranks sixth nationally, at 45.3 yards a punt. Berry ranks No. 7 in FCS, averaging 44.2. And many more might be on their way; Chapman is currently training 16 players, and hopes to place almost all of them at colleges next year.

"I think there will be far more," Berry says. "There's such a large talent pool over there. I think it's only a matter of time before almost every school will have an Australian guy punting. In another five or 10 years there might be hundreds over here."

Although Hornsey already was on the roster when Memphis coach Justin Fuente arrived, the coach quickly developed an appreciation for a punter who was anything but common. Fuente describes Hornsey as "a rough-and-tumble guy" who grew up tackling and being tackled, and still marvels to watch Hornsey's ability to punt on the dead run when goofing around.

"He can kick the ball from any angle," Fuente says. "It's like throwing the ball. When you see a guy who can throw the ball sidearm, over the top, three-quarters and off-balance, that kind of deal? That's almost like Tom is when he's punting."

The Tigers employ traditional style punts and rugby-style to both sides — Hornsey uses both feet.

"He's so versatile," Fuente says, "it changes all the punt return rules and all that stuff. He's a pretty nice weapon."

Berry played rugby and Australian Rules football as a kid in Essendon, Victoria, Australia. He also played American football in a youth league in Melbourne — "A little bit of receiver and safety and corner, depending on what we needed," he says — and recognized punting might be his ticket to an education in the United States. He says the fake punt was originally supposed to be an actual pass, but he suggested another option, telling Eastern Kentucky coach Dean Hood he was more comfortable punting than passing.

"When I got here I couldn't throw the ball to save my life," he says.

They checked the rulebook, then practiced it and unleashed it on Morehead State.

"They had no idea what was going on," he says. "They thought it might have just been a really bad punt."

Instead, it was a really good idea — and the outgrowth of an ambitious initiative.

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George Schroeder, a national college football reporter for USA TODAY Sports, is on Twitter @GeorgeSchroeder.