McKeever giving R&B a kick

Nate McKeever got his first big chance on June 26 against the Syracuse Shock. And, from 31 yards away, he booted the football straight through the uprights.

That's when he realized he actually does belong on a football field. The rest of the Watertown Red and Black realized it, too.

The 1997 Indian River Central graduate assumed the kicking duties this season for the Red and Black, giving the team consistency at a position that has presented uncertainty since Scott Ford retired following the 2004 campaign.

McKeever will likely face bigger kicks in his semipro career. But none will prove to be more important to his development in learning a sport that he's playing for the first time this summer.

"I made my first kick, and that was a big help," McKeever said Thursday. "I've had good instruction here, and the coaches have helped me out a lot."

Football was never McKeever's sport of choice as he attended high school at Indian River. The soccer field was better suited to his tastes.

But when he returned to the area in 2006, after enlisting in the Air Force in 2002, McKeever got involved in a rough-touch league at the Watertown YMCA. He remained an active soccer player, too, participating mostly in indoor leagues at the Y.

Joining the Red and Black seemed like a perfect way to blend the two sports.

"He told me he'd never kicked a regulation size football, and that he was a soccer player and that he is physically fit," head coach George Ashcraft said of his first meeting with McKeever. "He said all he wanted to was kick, and what he's done so far in games has been great."

McKeever enters tonight's Empire Football League game against the Silver and Black Raiders having connected on 3-of-3 field goal attempts, and 4-of-5 extra-point tries. The one he missed was last week against Binghamton in driving rain, Ashcraft said.

If there's one phase of the game in which the defending league champion hasn't excelled in recent seasons, it's the kicking game. Last year, quarterback Brian Williams and Ben Call combined to make just 13-of-23 extra-point attempts, and the team attempted just one field goal.

That problem appears to be solved.

"I've seem him in the pregame warm-up boot a 55-yarder," Ashcraft said. "So he has that potential. It's nice to know if we're on the 20-yard line and it's fourth down, he has the ability to put it through just about every time."

McKeever compares the adjustment to kicking an awkwardly shaped football to the way a golfer approaches a drive. He said it's all in the mechanics.

"It's a change from soccer in that it's like swinging a golf club," he said. "You have to be perfect every time, or it's going to effect it."

McKeever said he's also aware of the 2007 season, when the Red and Black's only two losses — both by a point to Vermont — could have been avoided with consistent kicking.

Former kicker Leo Grant missed an extra-point and three field goals against the Ice Storm that season, which included a 9-8 championship loss.

McKeever knows such a situation could present itself this year, too.

"That's something you dream about as a kid, hitting a winning shot or a winning kick," he said. "That scenario has definitely run through my head."