BOULDER — Kodak moments for college place-kickers don’t get tucked in the back of a photo album somewhere. They get blown up the size of stadium video screens.
So sit back and watch the kicking life of Colorado’s Aric Goodman pass by in either spectacular color or dull shades of gray.
Click: Isolating himself in his Laramie apartment three years ago, days after his extra-point attempt goes wide right and Wyoming loses at Virginia in overtime, 13-12.
Click: Sitting in his Boulder apartment last year, exhausted from exhilaration and the new gift of an athletic scholarship, after his 25-yard field goal beats West Virginia in overtime on national TV, 17-14.
Click: Getting heckled on campus after he responds to the scholarship by missing his next eight field-goal attempts.
Click: Ending the season with two field goals, the latter a 37-yarder, that helped CU nearly upset Nebraska in the season finale.
“I’ve gotten a bunch of opportunities a bunch of people don’t get,” Goodman said. “I’m extremely grateful for those things. But the few failures I’ve had in my life I’ve shared on a national scale.”
Goodman is sitting alone in the Dal Ward Center last week, knowing full well that at 5 p.m. today he will be anything but alone. He’ll be in front of a packed Folsom Field crowd and a national TV audience for the season opener against rival Colorado State.
He and his coaches are telling fans to relax. This is not a tortured soul. Not now, anyway. The staff opened up the kicking competition last spring, and Goodman has been blowing away the field since.
He has nailed a new two-step approach and has the unwavering support of a twin sister and father who know a little about kicking. Ally Goodman is a midfielder on Colorado’s 15th-ranked soccer team and their dad, Curtis, kicked for Hawaii from 1976-78.
More important, Aric has the support of CU coach Dan Hawkins.
“He’s kicking well right now,” Hawkins said. “Probably the good thing for him was last year he was perfect in camp going in and that probably snakebit him. Now he’s not quite perfect, but he’s still kicking a pretty high percentage.”
Family support boosts confidence
A year ago at this time, Hawkins thought his kicking question was answered for the next three years. Goodman, a Cherry Creek High graduate, thought his prayer was answered forever. He had walked on at Colorado after small-town Laramie became harder to handle than missed extra points. It was Sept. 18 and his 25-yarder against West Virginia in overtime ignited a fan avalanche that engulfed Goodman in a sea of black.
He managed to escape to the locker room without getting mass-hugged right onto the injured list. When he emerged, Ally and Curtis had tears in their eyes. Then it got better. Aric told them Hawkins gave him a scholarship. Ally began to cry.
“Having the opportunity to kick a game-winning field goal in any situation and then put it on national TV; it’s West Virginia, at home; then getting the scholarship on top of it — words can’t describe the emotion and jubilation,” Aric said.
Plenty of words describe his next two months, none of them good. No miss cost Colorado a game, but his confidence was slipping away as fast as the Buffaloes’ season. Trouble was, he couldn’t pinpoint the problem. Four kicks went wide left, three went wide right. Two hit uprights. One was blocked. The fact that only two were under 43 yards didn’t matter. Goodman finished 5-of-14, and Colorado’s 6-for-17 on field goals (Jameson Davis was 1-for-3) was the worst in Division I-A football.
“I felt I did something wrong each time, something small,” Goodman said. “In this position, something small means a lot.”
While his confidence waned, support didn’t. Hawkins never ripped him in the media. Sometimes he’d walk him from the practice field to Folsom Field with the snapper and holder.
They’d stand on the sideline and Hawkins would call for a field goal. They’d go through the same routine as in a game, sans rushing linemen and screaming crowd.
More than anything, however, Goodman found strength in his dad and twin sister. Ally was the one who’d catch kicks for him during warm-ups and at halftime at Cherry Creek. She’s the one giving him a thumb’s up from a couple rows up on the 50 during Colorado games.
“I just let him know that he knows he’s capable of doing it,” she said. “I tell him to keep his head up. By no means was he missing badly. I told him to not listen to anybody else and he can do it. We’ve all seen him do it before.”
Adjustment helps eliminate motions
Unfortunately, sometimes he had to listen to others. In the offseason, he’d hear students say, “Hey, you were terrible this year” or “You had an awful year.” He didn’t argue.
“I think it was a big hardship on him,” Curtis said. “I think it was extremely difficult. But to tell you the truth, I know a lot of people who wouldn’t have taken what had transpired last year. I really give him a lot of credit for not giving up.”
Aric also did something about it. With the help of special-teams coach Kent Riddle, Goodman junked the little jab step he had been using and became a two-step kicker. Like a golf or baseball swing, Riddle said, the less motion, the fewer things that can go wrong.
The same adjustment turned Adam Vinatieri from an undrafted no-name out of South Dakota State to a Super Bowl hero for the New England Patriots. The Buffaloes will settle for some celebratory pictures of Goodman in the paper.
The next snapshot will be taken tonight.
“He seems to be as confident as anyone could possibly be,” Curtis said. “He could get on a roll and if he makes three or four in a row to start the season, I think great things will happen.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
