SE: Blake Lynch — Small Kicker, Huge Success Story
Sep 21, 2018 | Football, Sports Extra
By Corbin McGuire
Blake Lynch's path to become K-State's starting kicker as a redshirt sophomore is littered with storylines. Almost all of them have little to do with his 5-foot-5 frame — or, more specifically, overcoming said height.
Take Lynch's height out of the equation, and where he is now is still beyond impressive.
His mother, Kim, went to K-State, but Lynch did not grow up going to Wildcat games. The first one he said he attended was during his sophomore year at Goddard Eisenhower High School. Ironically, it's the same year he started kicking footballs.
"The first day I kicked," Lynch said, "I was, like, 'I want to go to K-State and kick footballs.'"
Lynch made it to K-State as a grayshirt walk-on in 2015. He redshirted the following season and spent last season learning from First Team All-Big 12 kicker Matt McCrane. During the offseason, Lynch also worked as a facility maintenance student worker at the Vanier Family Football Complex to help pay for tuition.
This spring and fall, he got an opportunity to win a position battle and seized it. Now he's on scholarship and among K-State's strengths through three games.
So, yes, it's a little unfair to pigeonhole Lynch, 6-of-7 on field goals this season, as simply an undersized success story. His story is that, but it's also so much more.
"He's a great example of, for a lot of kids," former K-State kicker Anthony Cantele said, "of somebody who just never gave up."
"He's not just the short kicker who never misses," added Marc Marinelli, Goddard Eisenhower High School's head football coach. "He's a kid you want your son to grow up to be."
'How High?'
One of Lynch's most distinguishable characteristics, by most accounts, is his work ethic.
A soccer player growing up, Lynch played football his last three years at Goddard Eisenhower. In the winter of 2013, he started privately training with Cantele, who was coming off an impressive three-year K-State kicking career.
"For me, I don't know if I've worked with a more driven individual, a more hard-working kid than him," said Cantele, who's trained many kickers and is the boys and girls soccer coach at Kapaun Mt. Carmel in Wichita, where he's also Spanish teacher. "Every day he goes to work and doesn't complain. He's one of those kids where you tell him to jump and he asks, 'How high?' He'll do anything. I think that's the biggest reason he's gotten to where he is today."
Marinelli can attest to the kicker's hard work as well. At one point, Marinelli said he gave Lynch his own ball bag so he didn't have to go to borrow footballs from the equipment room every time he wanted to kick, which was often.
"We'd be running offense and defensive periods, and he'd be over there kicking nonstop. In the summer, he's kicking. In the winter, he's kicking," he said. "He never missed a day in the weight room. He was great when he had to lead workouts. He had phenomenal grades; he was a great student-athlete. His work ethic was always tremendous.
"He's the perfect K-State kid."
Nothing changed in that respect when Lynch got to K-State. If anything, his work ethic took on an even stronger reputation.
On top of the heavy lifting, both in terms of strength training and schedule requirements, every other player goes through, Lynch took on more. As a walk-on, he had to. He worked 20-30 hours a week during the offseason at Vanier for extra money. This included cleaning the locker room, painting, drywall work and a variety of other odd-end jobs as well.
"I would leave my house at like seven and not get home until like 10 or so," he said, adding that his teammates would "all joke around and say I needed a cot here."
"We'd all be leaving practice," K-State senior Dalton Risner added, "and Blake Lynch would be scrubbing the floors."
Lynch, however, said hard work is all he's ever known. His father, Jason, runs a roofing company in the Wichita area, and Lynch would work for him during the summers and even in his grayshirt year.
"Everybody works hard in my family," Lynch said. "It's just been what it is forever."
'Emotionless Little Dude'
An alliteration of adjectives explain a lot about Lynch as well. He's calm, consistent and clutch.
Lynch hit a 47-yarder in the third quarter of a 3-0 win over a ranked Maize South team as a junior in high school. As a senior, he ended a double-overtime battle against Andover Central with a field goal.
"He was automatic," Marinelli said of Lynch, who earned all-state honors from the Topeka Capital-Journal and Wichita Eagle as a senior.
Fast forward to K-State's 2018 Purple/White Spring Game, and Lynch nailed a 44-yard attempt in the fourth quarter to give the Purple Team a 31-28 win. His first actual game, he went 4-for-4 from 24, 22, 38 and 44 yards in a three-point win over South Dakota — the most field goals ever made by a K-State kicker in his career debut. His lone miss so far was a 52-yard attempt against the wind.
"I'm so proud of him," K-State head coach Bill Snyder said. "He just does well to go out there, oblivious to any kind of pressure that might be on him. He really has a tremendous capacity to stay focused on his task at hand. You'd like to have everybody at every position to have that same kind of focus."
What does Lynch credit his early success to?
"I'd just say being consistent is the main thing," he said.
This started in his sessions with Cantele.
"Before I went to him, I had no idea what I was doing," Lynch said. "I was just a soccer player that went out there and kicked."
Cantele said the first thing he thinks of in regards to Lynch's beginnings as a kicker is his footwork. It lacked what it now has: Consistency.
"The phrase I like to use is: You kick the same no matter if you're kicking an extra point or a 60-yard field goal. You never change up the mechanics," Cantele said. "Once he got the consistency down with the steps and that idea of swinging the same way no matter where you are, then I started to notice real changes in him and real growth that made me believe that he could be kicking as well as he is right now."
Lynch kicked so well in his first game at K-State that the following week after a practice, he was surprised with a planned scholarship reveal. His reaction displayed the calmness he carries in every situation.
When associate head coach/special teams coordinator Sean Snyder asked if anyone had any questions in the post-practice huddle, senior right tackle Dalton Risner stood up and said, "When are we going to put Blake Lynch on scholarship?"
"Oh my gosh. What is he doing?" Lynch recalled thinking at the time. "Then it was kind of awkward for a second because Sean didn't say anything."
Sean, Risner said, eventually ended the silence with, "How about right now?"
The team then jumped up and down in excitement. Lynch cracked a smile, showing about as much emotion as has throughout his journey.
"Blake Lynch is kind of an emotionless little dude," Risner said.
Externally calm, Lynch admitted the moment was special.
"I've been working at that for a while now," he said. "It's just a big weight lifted off my shoulders."
'Why We're All Here'
Lynch holds a sense of fearless confidence as well.
He's not afraid to tackle on kickoffs — somewhat rare for a kicker of any size. He has two tackles already this season with one in each of the last two games.
"It was awesome to get out there and get some hitting in," Lynch said last after Saturday's 41-17 win over UTSA.
Asked if this whole journey, from grayshirt to redshirt to near the bottom of the depth chart to scholarship starter, has been surreal, Lynch said no. It's been his goal from day one.
"That's why we're all here, to start and play," he said. "I always knew if I worked hard I would get my opportunity."
It's part of why he's embraced the height jokes. He's hearing them because he's a contributor.
Whether it's Snyder lowering Lynch's height at each press conference — "I'll probably be 4-foot by the end of the season," Lynch laughed — or his teammates making him jump for high fives after made field goals — "Everybody gets pretty hyped. It's a good way to celebrate, I think," he said — Lynch takes some pride in "being small" but more in how his hard work has paid off.
"(My father) always told me not to give up and try my best. Ever since I was three years old, you know?" Lynch, who plans to keep working at Vanier in the spring, said. "My parents aren't the biggest, but he's always told me that didn't matter."
And?
"To keep working hard."
Blake Lynch's path to become K-State's starting kicker as a redshirt sophomore is littered with storylines. Almost all of them have little to do with his 5-foot-5 frame — or, more specifically, overcoming said height.
Take Lynch's height out of the equation, and where he is now is still beyond impressive.
His mother, Kim, went to K-State, but Lynch did not grow up going to Wildcat games. The first one he said he attended was during his sophomore year at Goddard Eisenhower High School. Ironically, it's the same year he started kicking footballs.
"The first day I kicked," Lynch said, "I was, like, 'I want to go to K-State and kick footballs.'"
Lynch made it to K-State as a grayshirt walk-on in 2015. He redshirted the following season and spent last season learning from First Team All-Big 12 kicker Matt McCrane. During the offseason, Lynch also worked as a facility maintenance student worker at the Vanier Family Football Complex to help pay for tuition.
This spring and fall, he got an opportunity to win a position battle and seized it. Now he's on scholarship and among K-State's strengths through three games.
So, yes, it's a little unfair to pigeonhole Lynch, 6-of-7 on field goals this season, as simply an undersized success story. His story is that, but it's also so much more.
"He's a great example of, for a lot of kids," former K-State kicker Anthony Cantele said, "of somebody who just never gave up."
"He's not just the short kicker who never misses," added Marc Marinelli, Goddard Eisenhower High School's head football coach. "He's a kid you want your son to grow up to be."
'How High?'
One of Lynch's most distinguishable characteristics, by most accounts, is his work ethic.
A soccer player growing up, Lynch played football his last three years at Goddard Eisenhower. In the winter of 2013, he started privately training with Cantele, who was coming off an impressive three-year K-State kicking career.
"For me, I don't know if I've worked with a more driven individual, a more hard-working kid than him," said Cantele, who's trained many kickers and is the boys and girls soccer coach at Kapaun Mt. Carmel in Wichita, where he's also Spanish teacher. "Every day he goes to work and doesn't complain. He's one of those kids where you tell him to jump and he asks, 'How high?' He'll do anything. I think that's the biggest reason he's gotten to where he is today."
Marinelli can attest to the kicker's hard work as well. At one point, Marinelli said he gave Lynch his own ball bag so he didn't have to go to borrow footballs from the equipment room every time he wanted to kick, which was often.
"We'd be running offense and defensive periods, and he'd be over there kicking nonstop. In the summer, he's kicking. In the winter, he's kicking," he said. "He never missed a day in the weight room. He was great when he had to lead workouts. He had phenomenal grades; he was a great student-athlete. His work ethic was always tremendous.
"He's the perfect K-State kid."
Nothing changed in that respect when Lynch got to K-State. If anything, his work ethic took on an even stronger reputation.
On top of the heavy lifting, both in terms of strength training and schedule requirements, every other player goes through, Lynch took on more. As a walk-on, he had to. He worked 20-30 hours a week during the offseason at Vanier for extra money. This included cleaning the locker room, painting, drywall work and a variety of other odd-end jobs as well.
"I would leave my house at like seven and not get home until like 10 or so," he said, adding that his teammates would "all joke around and say I needed a cot here."
"We'd all be leaving practice," K-State senior Dalton Risner added, "and Blake Lynch would be scrubbing the floors."
Lynch, however, said hard work is all he's ever known. His father, Jason, runs a roofing company in the Wichita area, and Lynch would work for him during the summers and even in his grayshirt year.
"Everybody works hard in my family," Lynch said. "It's just been what it is forever."
'Emotionless Little Dude'
An alliteration of adjectives explain a lot about Lynch as well. He's calm, consistent and clutch.
Lynch hit a 47-yarder in the third quarter of a 3-0 win over a ranked Maize South team as a junior in high school. As a senior, he ended a double-overtime battle against Andover Central with a field goal.
"He was automatic," Marinelli said of Lynch, who earned all-state honors from the Topeka Capital-Journal and Wichita Eagle as a senior.
Fast forward to K-State's 2018 Purple/White Spring Game, and Lynch nailed a 44-yard attempt in the fourth quarter to give the Purple Team a 31-28 win. His first actual game, he went 4-for-4 from 24, 22, 38 and 44 yards in a three-point win over South Dakota — the most field goals ever made by a K-State kicker in his career debut. His lone miss so far was a 52-yard attempt against the wind.
"I'm so proud of him," K-State head coach Bill Snyder said. "He just does well to go out there, oblivious to any kind of pressure that might be on him. He really has a tremendous capacity to stay focused on his task at hand. You'd like to have everybody at every position to have that same kind of focus."
What does Lynch credit his early success to?
"I'd just say being consistent is the main thing," he said.
This started in his sessions with Cantele.
"Before I went to him, I had no idea what I was doing," Lynch said. "I was just a soccer player that went out there and kicked."
Cantele said the first thing he thinks of in regards to Lynch's beginnings as a kicker is his footwork. It lacked what it now has: Consistency.
"The phrase I like to use is: You kick the same no matter if you're kicking an extra point or a 60-yard field goal. You never change up the mechanics," Cantele said. "Once he got the consistency down with the steps and that idea of swinging the same way no matter where you are, then I started to notice real changes in him and real growth that made me believe that he could be kicking as well as he is right now."
Lynch kicked so well in his first game at K-State that the following week after a practice, he was surprised with a planned scholarship reveal. His reaction displayed the calmness he carries in every situation.
When associate head coach/special teams coordinator Sean Snyder asked if anyone had any questions in the post-practice huddle, senior right tackle Dalton Risner stood up and said, "When are we going to put Blake Lynch on scholarship?"
"Oh my gosh. What is he doing?" Lynch recalled thinking at the time. "Then it was kind of awkward for a second because Sean didn't say anything."
Sean, Risner said, eventually ended the silence with, "How about right now?"
The team then jumped up and down in excitement. Lynch cracked a smile, showing about as much emotion as has throughout his journey.
"Blake Lynch is kind of an emotionless little dude," Risner said.
Externally calm, Lynch admitted the moment was special.
"I've been working at that for a while now," he said. "It's just a big weight lifted off my shoulders."
'Why We're All Here'
Lynch holds a sense of fearless confidence as well.
He's not afraid to tackle on kickoffs — somewhat rare for a kicker of any size. He has two tackles already this season with one in each of the last two games.
"It was awesome to get out there and get some hitting in," Lynch said last after Saturday's 41-17 win over UTSA.
Asked if this whole journey, from grayshirt to redshirt to near the bottom of the depth chart to scholarship starter, has been surreal, Lynch said no. It's been his goal from day one.
"That's why we're all here, to start and play," he said. "I always knew if I worked hard I would get my opportunity."
It's part of why he's embraced the height jokes. He's hearing them because he's a contributor.
Whether it's Snyder lowering Lynch's height at each press conference — "I'll probably be 4-foot by the end of the season," Lynch laughed — or his teammates making him jump for high fives after made field goals — "Everybody gets pretty hyped. It's a good way to celebrate, I think," he said — Lynch takes some pride in "being small" but more in how his hard work has paid off.
"(My father) always told me not to give up and try my best. Ever since I was three years old, you know?" Lynch, who plans to keep working at Vanier in the spring, said. "My parents aren't the biggest, but he's always told me that didn't matter."
And?
"To keep working hard."
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