Oaks Christian punter Aidan Flintoft is a swift analyze

Ninth and final in a series of tales profiling top rated high faculty soccer gamers by place. Nowadays, Aidan Flintoft, Oaks Christian punter and kicker.

There is a road in Pacific Palisades, in which you might see the strangest of scenes in 1 driveway — punters practising catching the ball while working with a JUGS equipment.

Aidan Flintoft, a senior punter and placekicker at Westlake Village Oaks Christian Superior, has George Caratan, a punter for Connecticut, as his neighbor. Flintoft’s brother, Colin, punted for UCLA, as did his cousin, Stafon. When they are all in town, they’ll use the JUGS equipment, triggering strangers to stare and ponder what is in the water in Palisades?

The Flintofts have been recognized to go into the hallway of the household house and follow fall drills.

Aidan has experienced a meteoric rise in football. He did not have a one punt in large college until finally previous time, when he averaged 40.1 yards. He attended Los Angeles Windward as a freshman and sophomore though debating no matter if to make soccer his activity.

“What happened is my cousin was a soccer player at Loyola and as it sort of happens with a whole lot of soccer teams and kickers, they obtain a soccer player to sign up for the group,” he said. “He did truly effectively, went to UCLA and it bought my brother into it and because my brother got into, I finally bought into it.”

Throughout the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020, Flintoft started out shelling out weekends understanding to punt from previous UCLA punter Aaron Perez. Flintoft is evidently a rapidly learner thinking of how superior and how far his punts are traveling, not to point out he can kick discipline aims up to 50 yards.

“There’s a whole lot of keys to getting a great punter,” he stated. “I’d say possibly just currently being a calculated particular person, not riding the highs way too considerably or not looking at the lows and currently being composed through online games. Not permitting any undesirable ball have an effect on you far too much. There’s so a lot strategy to punting. You ought to have to place in the time.”

Punting is evolving into extra than just having the snap and kicking. The increase of Australian punters with their roll-out strategy is creating other people to study to do the same, along with directional punting to assistance coverages.

It still comes down to executing the tiny items to make the ball go higher and considerably, together with a quick launch to keep away from it currently being blocked.

“A ton of it is flexibility, getting ready to wind up your system like a rubber band, shoot it quickly, generating actually very good make contact with on the sweet spot, generating confident it comes off with a spiral with the right start angle,” he said.

Kickers and punters have been recognized to be a minimal various, but Flintoft insists, “I like to believe of myself as standard.”

He’s an A college student who committed to Stanford. He acquired excellent scores of five on his a few advanced placement examinations very last semester.

As for dealing with stress, he reported, “I never definitely feel about punting as a strain point. I attempt not to consider about all of it or any of the kicking things as strain. Each and every kick is the identical. It is going your physique in some uniform way.”

Of program, kickers experienced a great deal to say about the notice created by Cincinnati Bengals kicker Evan McPherson for the duration of the Tremendous Bowl at SoFi Stadium when he decided to keep outdoors the locker place to check out the halftime clearly show.

“Everybody I talked to reported, ‘That’s ill, superior for him.’ There’s possibly a number of who did not like it,” he stated.

Kickers/punters to view

Name, School, Ht., Wt., Yr., Remark

Nathan Alexander, Westlake, 5-10, 152, Sr. Will make area plans from 45 yards, booms punts

Mathias Brown, Sunny Hills, 6-, 160, Sr. Designed six of nine subject-aim attempts

Dylan Fingersh, Capistrano Valley, 5-10, 175, Jr. Transformed 8 of 9 industry-goal makes an attempt

Ismael Figueroa, Temescal Canyon, 5-10, 170, Sr. Made all 7 of his field-goal makes an attempt

Aidan Flintoft, Oaks Christian, 6-1, 185, Sr. Stanford commit averaged 40.1 yards for each punt

Clint Geryak, St. Francis, 5-9, 140, Sr. Pole vaulter made 9 of 12 field-aim attempts

Mark Hyan, Loyola, 6-4, 210, Jr. Soccer star has wonderful leg

Dieter Kelly, Orange Lutheran, 5-10, 195, Sr. Constantly a menace kicking area aims

John Norell, Glendora, 5-9, 160, Sr. Designed six of 10 discipline-objective tries, has 4.7 GPA.

Blake Wilson, Santa Margarita, 5-10, 180, Sr. Soccer/baseball star does everything