Toe Kicking

As a kid growing up in Macon in the 60’s, there wasn’t much exposure to the newly formed movement called soccer-style placekicking. Bobby Etter was one of a string of straight-on kickers the Falcons employed, that I grew up watching. Only when I was fully engrained as a “toe kicker” that I was exposed to some of the early sidewinders like Garo Yepremian, the Gogolak brothers, and Nick Mike-Mayer of the Falcons.

In tenth grade I started kicking with a square-toed kicking shoe. In the summer before 11th grade I remember riding downtown with Coach Brodie in his pickup truck, to Charlie Woods Sporting Goods. We went upstairs to the dimly lit attic and picked out a new, perfectly fitting Spot-Bilt kicking shoe. There were cool facemasks up there as well. But wearing a kicking shoe made me different, and I looked on punters and soccer-style kickers as being more cool, being able to do their job wearing regular shoes. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t make myself into a punter or soccer-style kicker.

After my sophomore season ended, I began taking the team ball bag down to the practice field to kick, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I would lift weights with the rest of the team. Sometimes my friend and fellow kicker Ricky Kurtz would join me kicking, but I was out there without fail. In the summer I kept the team ballbag in the back of my first car, the red ’66 Ford Country Sedan station wagon. I would practice kickoffs and field goals, moving around from the left hash marks to the right. To work on my accuracy I would kick one yard field goals, teeing the ball up on the hash mark in the end zone. Thankfully, I was always a guy who could kick it pretty straight, so accuracy wasn’t a big problem.

White cleats were becoming more fashionable, but it was only natural that the Central powerhouse wore black Spot-Bilt cleats. Some of my NFL heroes like Jim Kiick and Fred Belitnikoff would tape their shoes, and as a tenth grader dressing out for the big Friday night varsity games, I taped up my shoes as well. There was a small gang of shoe tapers, most of which were upperclassmen who got playing time, as opposed to 10th grade benchwarmers like me. I did it for the look, but my taped shoes elevated my status, as I would notice Poole and Putnal checking out each week’s tape job.

As a starter in the 11th grade I followed fashion by taping the backs of my shoes as well, creating an almost white shoed effect, contrasting against the black shoes of most of my teammates. The new coaches my senior year outfitted us in white shoes, so I reverted back to my 10th grade look, showing more black, like my current hero Belitnikoff.

Jim Holmes was a nice guy and decent football player. Started at tight end as a senior, but as a junior he played with me on the B team, going both ways. We had nicknamed him ‘Mobile Holmes’, but in the Athens game against Cedar Shoals, he scooped up a fumble and rumbled down the field for a touchdown. But he ran so slow, we were falling down laughing on the sidelines. It took forever, so after that Jim was called ‘mobile turtle’, even by the coaches.

Crazy center Mike Wager doled out the nicknames. Squat linebacker Danny Kurtz looked exactly like the clerk in MASH, so he was dubbed Radar. When his two younger brothers joined the team, they were Sonar and Quasar…by Motarola. Tackle Brannon was the Omeba, as he would engulf ballcarriers in his big belly. One day I lost my balance, and after that was called Surfin’ Murf, not knowing the character from old beach movies.