About midway through each Arizona State football practice, the team will leave the outdoor heat and triple-digit temperatures of the Kajikawa Practice Fields and enter the cool confines of the air-controlled Verde Dickey Dome.
Well, at least most of the team will.
The special teams’ specialists – kickers, punters and long snappers – will remain banished outdoors. The view of these players being outsiders becomes comically literal, as they are left to do many of their own things. Their coordinator, Shawn Slocum, typically also goes inside to fulfill his other duties as outside linebackers coach.
So what are these players left to do? At times, they try to make do with any extra shade they can find or make their own with some of the leftover padding. Other times, they’ll debate other sports – senior kicker Zane Gonzalez, among others, is a huge soccer fan.
But what seems like casual outdoor hangouts quickly becomes serious once the footballs come out. The kickers and punts take part in their own games, working on specific skill-based competitions that quickly get intense.
“We have fun and try to master our craft at the same time,” senior punter Matt Haack said. “It’s a good way to [practice] instead of just boring, repetition stuff. That stuff is necessary, but anytime you can get competition out there and just work on what you need to work on out there.”
Haack’s personal favorite is the “Punt Game,” where all the players take turns practicing different styles of punts and subjectively scoring each other based off of location, distance and hang time. The loser receives a punishment, which typically consists of simply shagging the balls in addition to the humiliation of defeat.
While his goal during the game may be to avoid being the one punished, Haack said there’s a much more serious purpose to the event.
“We pretty much anything to have some sort of competition throughout practice,” he said. “You don’t want to just sit around and not do anything, so we just try to come up with different things that, it looks like we’re just playing games, but we’re [working on stuff]. We’ll be playing the ‘Punt Game’ and I’ll be working on my drop, or hang time and distance together. We just come up with things to help our technique, and also be competitive with each other.”
Haack, along with Gonzalez, combine to form the most experienced punter-kicker combo in the Pac-12 and are as experienced as any other unit in the nation. Gonzalez, who emerged as a starter as a true freshman, is on the brink of history – with another season to replicate his first three, he will be one of three players in FBS history to amass 500 career points. Gonzalez has also hit 73 field goals in his career, a mark that is just 16 behind Florida State’s Dustin Hopkins for the most all-time.
Haack had to earn his way into the rotation part of the way through his freshman year, something head coach Todd Graham noted should have come much sooner. Since then, however, he’s developed into one of the country’s most consistent punters. Haack finished last season with 74 punts for an average of 43.05 yards, with just two touchbacks and 32 punts falling within the 20-yard line.
It’s not good enough for Haack.
“The biggest thing is consistency,” he said. “I mean, I’m still not as consistent as I’d want to be, but you can definitely tell throughout the years my comfort level being back there. My operation time is a lot faster and I don’t feel hurried. My steps are a lot better, my drop has gotten better. I’m still working on things, but just being able to hit consistent A- or B-[level] punts no matter what the situation [is the goal].”
The competitive drive is clearly still there for Haack, who has continued to excel even in events other than his punting. He does so in the classroom as a member of the Barrett, Honors College at ASU. He does so in the weight room, as Graham noted his work this summer put him in contention for the “Dirty Dozen.” He’ll still hear jokes from teammates, as he’s the only player on the active roster who has completed a pass at the Division I level, with his attempt coming on a 32-yard fake to D.J. Foster at Washington State last season. At heart, he still fashions himself as the high school receiver who reportedly ran a 4.6-second 40-yard dash.
“[Matt] is probably one of the best athletes I’ve ever had at punter,” Graham said. “I mean, he’s fast, like receiver fast. Very strong and powerful, and his leg has gotten stronger and stronger.”
It was also in high school when he picked up his current day job – punting. It was his rugby-style punting that first drew ASU’s eye, and is something that he continues to utilize. He may no longer be the only guy on the roster with the ability to perform the Aussie-style kick after the addition of native Australian Michael Sleep-Dalton, but Haack said he enjoys being able to mix up punting styles.
“I’m always doing different things,” he said. “Last year, that’s kind of when how I got the Australian ‘end over end’ style of getting the ball inside the [20-yard line]. In practice, I toyed with it and kind of just worked on it and I was able to get that into the game.”
