Kiwi kicks on to college big-time
Afew years back Wellingtonian Finn Rudd took a punt on a less travelled sporting pathway and has been getting a kick out of it pretty much ever since.
Now this one time Kiwi high school footballer (as in soccer) is getting ready to step into the frenzied arena of American division one college football (as in American football), with his sights on one day taking a crack at the mega-millions of the NFL.
Not bad for a self-taught American football punter who had never so much as picked up the pigskin before he started exploring his options at the end of high school when his time in the roundball code meandered to an unpromising conclusion.
Rudd, now 21 and finishing up a stint as a punter/kicker at the junior college level in Kansas, has just landed a full scholarship to division one the University of California, Davis, where he will head most likely in August, the coronavirus pandemic permitting.
The Kiwi youngster – born and bred in Wellington, with a touch of Canterbury finishing thrown in – wants to shout his latest accomplishment from the rooftops. Partly because he’s justifiably proud of what he’s achieved in such unusual circumstances; and partly because he hopes he just might inspire other Kiwis to follow suit.
Rudd’s sporting story is by no means your standard boy makes good progression. When he finished up at Lincoln High, just out of Christchurch, in 2016 he was a passably good first XI footballer a long way from carving out anything special in the beautiful game.
Then, thanks to the long reach of social media, he discovered something that piqued his attention and changed his life. Three or so years later, he’s about to play division one college football in the US, and maybe one day line up a shot at the biggest league on the planet.
Rudd never knew much about American football when, late in 2016, he started reading up on a large number of Australians carving careers as kickers in div-1 college ball. Some had even made the NFL.
‘‘I saw this guy on Instagram, looked up the position and saw they literally just kick the ball,’’ he told Stuff from Kansas where he’s finishing up at Highland Community College.
‘‘That’s their sole job. With no knowledge of anything, I went down to the park and started kicking. For three years, I was just kicking, kicking, kicking, whenever I could.’’
Practise makes perfect. Rudd worked for a supermarket in Wellington and would spend every morning at the park kicking the football. Then when he moved to a gruelling factory job in Rolleston, Canterbury, his kicking sessions moved to an evening slot.
But he kept at it. And got better and better. Eventually Highland (the Scotties) gave this driven Kiwi a shot as a punter, restarter and backup field goal man. Now Davis will bring him in as a likely redshirt sophomore as they groom him for their main punting role.
In American football the three kicking roles (punter, kickoffs and at goal) are specialised. A kicker enters the game as part of special teams and plays only that phase. A punter could go a whole season without seeing a live ball situation.
Or not, as Rudd discovered in his one and only season playing competitive football in 2019 (the Scotties went 6-5 and rolled the No 1 juco team in the country).
In the third to last game of the season, at Dodge, he took a kickoff with 30 seconds remaining and his team up 20-16.
‘‘My kickoff team wasn’t as flash as I thought they were, the guy caught the ball, came all the way down the side and I was last man standing. He’s a huge dude, 6’3, 220, and if he scores they win. I thought ‘here we go’. I threw my body at him, went for his legs and definitely got the worse end of that hit. But, hey, we saved the game.’’
As mentioned this is not a well-travelled pathway for Kiwis. Rudd’s inspiration was Auckland’s Jonny Linehan who has just finished his career at Brigham Young University where he first attended on a rugby scholarship, but switched halfway through to become punter on the football team.
Now Rudd hopes to use this opportunity as a stepping stone, not just to a degree (he will study communications and psychology at Davis) but potentially a career in the NFL.
‘‘That’s the dream, and has been since I first started kicking the football. The reason New Zealanders and Aussies are so sought after is because of the way we kick the ball. We can backspin it, and that’s valuable in this game.’’
Davis, which plays in the Big Sky conference, has sent two punters to the NFL over the last half-dozen years. Rudd would love to make that three.
‘‘I want people to know this is an opportunity that’s within reach if you work hard enough. I had a 15-year-old kid message, asking how I did this. I told him to do his research and find his pathway.
‘‘When I’m done with my career I’d love to come back to New Zealand and start a pathway. I wasn’t a freak athlete or kicker. There were probably 100 guys at my high school that could be doing this .
‘‘When I first picked up an American football I was terrible. It’s different to kicking a rugby ball. You have to figure it out. I just kept the faith and said to myself, ‘if you keep doing this every day, eventually you’re going to be really good at it’.
‘‘That’s what happened.’’