River Hill’s McGeehan savoring winning kick
A decade ago, Cooper McGeehan was watching tapes of “Monday Night Football” in Spain.
He was then a third-grader, a goalkeeper playing soccer; he lived in Europe after his dad, a salesman, moved the family when McGeehan was 5.
As his eyes focused on the helmeted shapes on the screen, football wouldn’t leave his mind.
In last month’s Big 33 Football Classic, McGeehan, 18, connected on a field goal from 37 yards out with 10.5 seconds left to give Maryland its first victory in four years against rival Pennsylvania.
“For Cooper to come in clutch in that way, there’s no better way to cap off his high school career,” River Hill coach Brian Van Deusen said.
The 6-foot-2, 195-pound McGeehan concluded his senior year with the Hawks 6-for-8 on field goals, giving him 13 career makes. As a punter, he averaged 40 yards, and made the 2017 All-Metro first team.
Van Deusen wouldn’t normally look twice at a freshman. When fall tryouts started four years ago, the coach — as he did every year — focused more on the sophomores, juniors and seniors he planned to use to stock his roster. But McGeehan’s father, Michael, wanted his son to make varsity and had been sending River Hill film of him kicking.
“During one of my practices on JV, my coach called me up to kick with them a couple times and I just thought he wanted to see what I had to offer,” McGeehan said. “When I kicked, he was very pleased. I kind of knew I was going to make varsity.”
McGeehan’s left foot always drew Van Deusen to his kicker. In soccer especially, lefty players, such as Argentinian Lionel Messi, are deemed special.
“The ball spirals the other way when he kicks it,” Van Deusen said of McGeehan. “Not all returners are used to seeing that.”
Said his kicking coach, Desi Cullen: “It’s just different. It gives him a slight edge.”
While in Europe, McGeehan’s father was always pushing to find a way back to the United States, finally making the move when his son was in fifth grade.
“As soon as we moved back, he signed me up for football,” McGeehan said.
Initially a defensive end, McGeehan fell in love with kicking by seventh grade, finding he could transfer his soccer skills to the football field. He began training with Cullen, a former Connecticut punter who participated in a Chicago Bears minicamp in 2010.
At the tail of his sophomore year, McGeehan tried his hand at linebacker and played the position through graduation.
“He never really came off the field,” Van Deusen said. “You know he can tackle. It’s great having a kicker than can tackle. Just having that confidence.”
Facing down a horde of squirming defenders, each whose sole job is to block the kick by any means necessary, a kicker ought to be fearless — but for McGeehan, it wasn’t enough just to be an unflappable special teams member.
“I’m not really afraid of hitting them,” he said. “That way, I knowif the returner gets by my teammates, I’m going to stop him and he’s not going to get that touchdown.”
McGeehan, who plans to attend Pittsburgh and be a walk-on player, hoped the Maryland football program noticed his game-winning play.
“My kicking coach is really good friends with the special teams coordinator there, and [Cullen] made it seem like they didn’t really know anything about it,” McGeehan said.
McGeehan talked about his options with his parents and decided to stick with Pitt.
“It’s cool to have had that moment. But I told him, honestly, he’s not a field-goal kicker in college,” Cullen said. “He’ll be a punter. He had an outside shot with Maryland.”
For McGeehan, though, images of the football soaring away from his left foot as the clock ran down, followed by teammates surging around him to celebrate, are running over and over in his mind.
“I just couldn’t stop thinking about that moment,” he said, “because it was a very special moment in my life.”