‘It was a shocker’: Why South Carolina punter Kai Kroeger isn’t your average specialist
Fred Kroeger leapt from his seat.
On the screen in front of him, his son and South Carolina punter Kai Kroeger received a snap from Matthew Bailey and took two steps toward the USC 45-yard line.
Rather than boot the ball toward the Tennessee end zone, Kai crow-hopped, reared back and delivered a dart to streaking receiver Payton Mangrum down the right sideline. Mangrum caught the ball, dipped a tackler and dove toward the pylon to complete a 44-yard touchdown connection.
“It was a shocker,” Fred said. “I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ I jumped up and down.”
Saturday, Kroeger’s touchdown pass gave South Carolina a puncher’s chance after falling behind in Knoxville 28-0. Four weeks earlier, it was his hold on a high snap that he corralled and placed for kicker Parker White to drill a game-tying field goal at ECU that made the difference.
Combined, the plays offered a look at the dynamism of South Carolina’s punter who boasts a quarterback rating of 799.6, is averaging 1.5 punts per game inside the 20-yard line and who has cemented himself among the Southeastern Conference’s elite specialists.
“I’m always wanting to compete and never really sitting in the backseat and just kind of strolling,” Kroeger said ahead of USC’s win over Troy. “Because once you do that, in my opinion, or if I did that, I’d start not focusing on my craft or getting better.”
‘I think we’ve got something here’
Kroeger awaited the first snap of his varsity career as temperatures in late fall Chicagoland dipped into the mid-30s and tinged his toes tucked inside his cleats.
Just a sophomore at Lake Forest High School, he’d been called up to punt during a 2017 playoff game against Riverside-Brookfield. The icy conditions of that late October night made Kroeger’s first appearance chillier than expected.
Catching the snap, he squared and fired off his kick. The problem? He’d flubbed it. The ball rose maybe five yards into the air before it crashed down to the field and rolled backward.
“We ended up getting a negative punt to start off his Lake Forest career,” Jai Williams, Kroeger’s high school teammate who now plays at Kentucky, said through a laugh.
Kroeger began working with high school specialists as a fifth-grader. He then punted for the junior high team at Deer Path Middle School as a seventh-grader. That aforementioned varsity call-up came four years later.
Following a kicking camp at Loyola Academy during Kai’s freshman season, his mother, Monica, was approached by the session’s director Filip Filipovic.
Filipovic was raised in Serbia, but was introduced to American football while studying in the United States during high school. He eventually walked on the team at South Dakota and spent five years punting in the NFL.
“He kind of called us aside after the camp and said, ‘I think we’ve got something here if he’s willing to work for it,’ “ Monica recounted.
Work Kroeger did. His personal Twitter feed is littered with videos of kicking workouts and highlight tapes that date back to 2018. He spent countless hours with Lake Forest long-snapper Sam Volpe, who later pledged to play at Ohio.
Opponents often lined up on Kroeger’s first kick of the day expecting a short punt. Such was the norm at the high school level. Kroeger promptly skied the ball over their heads and toward the corners of the field. Fans erupted as Volpe and Williams choreographed celebrations with Kroeger along the sideline.
“I didn’t want to be the guy to mess (him) up,” Lake Forest head coach Chuck Spagnoli — who also coached the team’s specialists — told The State. “I said, ‘I’m smart enough to know to stay in my lane.’ When you have a kid like (Kroeger) who does what he does, I didn’t want to get in the middle of all that.”
Starring on the national circuit, landing at South Carolina
Luke Radke has spent a decade working with the nation’s elite specialists.
Radke, the national lead instructor for Kohl’s Kicking, joined the organization in 2011 and has since helped the program become a leader in specialist development for high-schoolers nationwide.
Kohl’s operates like a circuit. Camps are held around the country at varying levels. Those who participate receive ratings from the service in the same way 247Sports and Rivals grade recruits.
Working with Radke and Joe Gardener — Kohls’ Chicago-area coach — Kroeger quickly developed a reputation on the camp circuit. His punts weren’t the longest or strongest, but his direction was elite.
“He was always above the rest of his class,” Radke told The State. “He was always one of the best in the country for his age in finding a spot, hitting the zone, being outside of the hash (marks), being inside the 20. His situational punting and awareness is excellent.”
“He didn’t necessarily have that big five second-plus football that a couple of the kids at his age had,” Gardener added. “He was like, ‘Well, if I’m not going to be that big five-plus second guy, I’ve got to find a way to be accurate.’ ... With Kai, he was able to actually do directional stuff at a young age, which helped him a lot then transition to the college game where it’s all directional.”
Kroeger’s kicking was top-notch. So too was his athleticism.
He started playing flag football in the fourth grade, latching on at any spot where he could get the ball in his hands.
He developed into a quarterback at Deer Path and, eventually, stuck under center on the JV team at Lake Forest. When he was supplanted under center at the varsity level, Kroeger moved out to receiver, where he was equally dynamic.
Trailing Illinois powerhouse Stevenson High School by 21 points in the final regular season game of his senior season, Kroeger corralled a 59-yard touchdown to give Lake Forest a late lead and secure their spot in the state playoffs for the 12th consecutive season.
“Obviously he had good size,” Spagnoli said. “He had decent speed. He wasn’t the fastest kid on the field, but he was certainly fast enough.”
As the now 6-foot-4, 195-pound Kroeger earned honor after honor — including securing the No. 1 ranking among 2020 punters per Kohls’ in-house ratings — colleges began to notice.
Kai and Fred traveled around the country for unofficial visits and specialist camps on college campuses. South Carolina got a visit. So did LSU, Wisconsin, Penn State, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Louisville, Syracuse, Minnesota and Ball State.
Fred had 800,000 miles on United Airlines saved up before Kai started getting recruited. He used every single one of them by the end of the recruiting process.
Despite Kroeger’s unique skill-set, he fell into the usual abnormalities regarding specialist recruiting. College staffs are largely limited in whether specialists can even receive scholarships. Most are asked to walk on.
South Carolina, though, had a scholarship to give.
“It was obvious Kai felt at home in that environment (at USC),” Monica said.
Finding comfort at USC
After graduating from Lake Forest in May 2020, Kroeger headed off to South Carolina two months later. The COVID-19 pandemic limited chances on the field, but he found ways to work around it. Every so often he could get into the USC practice facility. When that was closed off, he headed to the fields up around Williams-Brice Stadium to get kicks in.
Kroeger and kicker Mitch Jeter even spent time tossing the ball back and forth in their dorm room to practice receiving snaps. Kroeger practiced his punt drops by bouncing the ball on the floor.
“I just tried to do anything I could to help me,” Kroeger said.
Monica and Fred laugh when asked how Kai has taken to living well below the Mason-Dixon line after growing up in a Midwest suburb straight out of a John Hughes flick.
“Y’all” has become a persistent presence in Kai’s vocabulary. An avid golfer and fisherman, he’s quickly found spots to partake in his hobbies in his limited off time. His girlfriend is also from South Carolina.
For all the changes in dialect or adjustments to the Deep South, though, those in the Midwest are still keeping close tabs on the punter out of the Windy City.
“I was gonna text you when he threw a touchdown this weekend!” Radke said, coincidentally, in a text on Monday. “Athlete!”
