Sep
Edmonton: More than just a kicker
Courtesy Edmonton Journal:
There are pure kickers in pro football and then there are athletes whose job description happens to be kicker.
Noel Prefontaine of the Edmonton Eskimos is firmly in the latter category.
In an age of athletic specialization, Prefontaine is a passionate, all-around football player trapped inside a kicker’s body, so he expresses himself in a specialist’s role in a team game he has worked hard to understand in all its aspects.
This doesn’t make him unique in sport, but he is a rarity.
He’s not unlike Jose Luis Chilavert, the former goalkeeper for Paraguay renowned for jogging the length of the soccer pitch to take penalty kicks.
Prefontaine is reminiscent of those few major league pitchers who are also good hitters and run the bases well.
If he were a hockey goalie, he’d be Martin Brodeur, a ‘tender who can also be a third defenceman with his puck-handling ability.
In Prefontaine’s case, he has helped his team win left-footed, as he showed booting that game-winning 49-yard field goal on Saturday in Edmonton’s 31-30 victory over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
He has contributed right-handed, as he demonstrated on Oct. 4, 2008, firing a 19-yard strike to running back Calvin McCarty for a game-changing 19-yard gain on a third-down gamble in a key victory down the stretch.
“He’s an athlete first, a punter-kicker second,” said Eskimos special teams and associate head coach Noel Thorpe. “When I coached in Montreal and we would play Toronto four, maybe five times a year, he was a weapon for them.
“Not only can he re-establish field position with great punts, he can pin a team with his coffin-corner punts. Teams have to account for him because he can throw the ball and he can run the ball. He’s an additional offensive player for us, even though we’re playing special teams.”
Before being traded to Edmonton prior to the 2008 season, Prefontaine spent nine years in Toronto, where his placements were crucial on a team that dominated on defence but struggled to score touchdowns.
His aggressive play on kickoff coverage teams earned him value-added respect from teammates, not to mention a concussion or two.
“He’s a guy who’s going to come downfield on a kickoff and he’s going to cover and he’s going to smack the returner,” Thorpe said.
It’s all a part of the deal, in Prefontaine’s mind.
“It’s not uncommon that kickers have a certain stereotype and, to be honest with you, I’ve spent the last 12 years trying to change that,” Prefontaine said. “But it (the stereotype) got that way for some reason.
“It got that way because you had guys who had kicking ability who just came out, put on a helmet and kicked the ball.
“To me, it’s just important that kickers understand the entirety of the game,” said Prefontaine.
A quarterback at El Camino High School in San Diego, Prefontaine attended San Diego State on a scholarship he won strictly to handle punt duties.
“That was when I had to come to grips with the fact that I wasn’t six-foot-four, so I wasn’t going to play quarterback and I wasn’t a 4.5 guy (running 40 metres), so I wasn’t going to play another skill position. The reality kind of set in.”
So did a determination that if he was going to be a kicker, he would do it with style and work to alter the stereotype. Playing in the CFL, with its heavy emphasis on the kicking game, has helped.
“The kicking game rules up here are phenomenal, it allows the kicker to be that much more involved,” Prefontaine said. “They want their kickers to do all three, so the contribution level is enormous.
“I just love that. I was cut out to play this game.”
He believes the athlete-first, kicker-second approach ultimately makes him a better kicker, too.
“You take the 81-yard (punt) I had in the (Hamilton) game for the single,” Prefontaine said. “I was trying to hit that as hard as I could because a point then would (make it) a seven-point (difference).
“In my mind, time was running down, it was now we’ve got to start getting points, we’ve got to start getting closer, so we have a chance at the end. “Luckily, it turned out that way.”
Prefontaine, who turns 36 in December, believes he has a number of years left as a player, depending on how his body holds up.
When the playing is done, Prefontaine wants to coach, but “not so much kickers.
“I mean, I will work with kickers, I know enough to give them pointers, but they can be a different breed,” Prefontaine said. “There’s a big difference between talking to (someone) that kicks and talking to a football player.
“I think I relate more to the football player. I would definitely want to coach some other position.”
