It’s a small fraternity by number of athletes, but there is solidarity in the group of kickers, not only the area and the state, but nationally.
They alone know the pressure that comes with the job. They know the rumors that kickers don’t work hard and have an easy job are unfounded. They understand the kicking game is indeed one of the three phases and as such is an important part of the game.
Yet the position did not initially catch on here in southern West Virginia. It was seen like the forward pass. When you try it, three things could happen and two of them (miss or block) were bad.
Kicking was used to start halves or to be done after scoring a touchdown and going for two. Consider the case of Meadow Bridge, which before a made field goal in 2019 had gone at least 50 years with just one attempt. One.
“I asked coach (Larry) McClintic (the legendary coach at Meadow Bridge from 1969-2015) when was the last time Meadow Bridge kicked a field goal,” said coach Dwayne Reichard, himself a former player and assistant coach at Meadow Bridge. “He said, ‘I don’t know about making one, but I can tell you the last time we attempted one.’”
Turns out it was 1983 in a playoff loss to Morgantown St. Francis. It was blocked. In a 9-8 loss. And so, too, was the field goal kicking attempts at Meadow Bridge.
But in the last 10 years the trend is changing across the southern West Virginia gridiron landscape.
Now, in something that wouldn’t have been considered a decade ago, three of the best at their craft, all from southern West Virginia, Shady Spring’s Will Harmon, Oak Hill’s Ethan Vargo-Thomas and Woodrow Wilson’s Connor Mollohan are nationally ranked among kickers and punters, also known as the “Brotherhood of Specialists.”
As far as kickers go, Harmon is ranked as the No.14 kicker in his class in the National Kicking Ranking. Mollohan is No. 24, Vargo-Thomas No. 26.
Vargo-Thomas is ranked as the fifth-best punter prospect in his class by the same group, Mollohan 11th and Harman 17th.
The trio has made their names at summer camps. Harmon said he has been to nearly 10 typically one-day camps, where he says the competition is keen. Yet he and his local brethren hold their own.
“You don’t really get that here in southern West Virginia,” Harmon said of the oddity of Coalfield kickers being nationally ranked. “In Florida, Texas, California you have that. But not really here in southern West Virginia. It’s really surprising. I see guys from Florida, Texas and they are really good. It’s an awesome experience to have us three guys here within 30 minutes of each other and we are ranked with guys all across the nation.”
Ironically, Harmon met both at camps, Vargo-Thomas at the national camp last year and Mollohan at the Appalachian Prep Combine a couple months ago. Vargo and Mollohan met at a camp in Charlotte when the latter was wearing the Beckley B cap to a camp.
The importance of these camps is obvious. None of the kickers, all rising juniors, have gotten a lot of opportunities, yet.
Vargo-Thomas did kick two field goals last year, against Bluefield and Woodrow in back-to-back weeks, and made 10 PATs for 16 points. He had two field goals (vs. Princeton) and 12 PATs for 18 points as a freshman.
Last year Harmon, who backed up all-stater Erick Bevil as a freshman, was 11 of 12 on PATs.
Mollohan had six extra points last season.
The three share so many similarities, but their own introduction into the game, into the Brotherhood of Specialists, came in different ways.
Most players are aspiring kickers when they start, they just don’t know it. That was Harmon’s introduction. Difference is, he stayed with it.
“When I was little, I always liked kicking a football,” Harmon said. “It was pretty much punting when I was in pee wee football. Up in New York, I used to live up there, I did kickoffs because it was pretty cool. It only went like 25 yards or something like that but it was a pretty cool experience.”
After moving to West Virginia, he took a year off, but when the announcement was made prior to his eighth-grade year that the football team needed a kicker, he was ready to reprise the role, never really shaking that love of booting a ball.
“I figured I would give it a shot again,” Harmon said. “Ever since then I’ve been really working at kicking and trying to get better each day.”
For Vargo-Thomas, he liked the idea of playing football even with a background as a soccer player. But he didn’t want to be typecast as kicker only, so in this day of specialization, Vargo-Thomas is a bit of a throwback, also playing positions on offense and defense and is good enough to start in all three phases.
It’s something he takes seriously.
“I know that it’s important to me and the team that I play at a high level at other positions, too,” Vargo-Thomas said. “If I can help out in multiple ways I think it’s a very good thing.”
He allows that kicking does take up a good amount of time. Especially as a nationally-ranked specialist.
“It’s really technical so I would say I spend a lot more time on getting my form and technique perfect,” Vargo-Thomas said. “Other than that I practice a lot at everything I do.”
He also saw that with his soccer background he could see the field sooner.
“I played soccer my whole life and my freshman year (the coaching staff) asked me to try it and I was in a competition (for the job),” Vargo said. “I took it and I ran with it and I started practicing more. It’s been a long process but I’m starting to see some growth. As a freshman it was a way to get on the field. I wanted to play any way I could. But now I see it as a way to go to college or take it as far as I can.”
For Mollohan, his introduction to football was based strictly on his soccer background.
“I’ve played soccer my whole life,” Mollohan said, “It was just an easy transition. My eighth grade gym teacher was our football coach in middle school and he asked me to come out and kick for them one day. I kicked for him and I’ve loved it ever since.”
He said kicking the oblong football as opposed to the round soccer ball “is not as difficult as people say. But it takes time to learn.”
Mollohan said he will still play soccer at Woodrow and has no interest in playing other positions on the football field.
The work never stops for the kickers, whether it is alone on a field using a holding device or in a camp full of fellow kickers.
“I’ve been working hard, practicing a lot,” Harmon said. “I usually practice three or four times a week.”
Harmon has a kicking coach, former WVU kicker Matt McCollough.
“He pretty much shows me what I’m doing wrong and fixes my form,” Harmon said.
Mollohan, too, works up to four times a week, sometimes on the lonely turfed field at Van Meter Stadium.
“I’ve been trying to get better at my craft,” Mollohan said. “I’m probably out there four times a week working on my mechanics and trying to get better. Kicking is mostly a mental game, so I’m trying to prepare my mind for everything that is coming with all the kicking I’ve got to do. It’s mostly mechanics because I know I have the talent to do what I have to do. It’s just keeping my mechanics straight.”
Vargo-Thomas uses a lot of his time keeping his kicking skills at a high level, while also working on the other aspects of his game. He is also an outstanding basketball player at Oak Hill.
“I’ve been to a handful of camps,” Vargo-Thomas said. “I’ve been training, private lessons, practicing. We’ve been doing sessions in practice. Anything I can do to get better.”
Harmon did a science project on the “Physics of Kicking” his eighth grade year and it won the Shady Spring Middle School competition and finished third in Raleigh County.
He still uses information from the paper.
“I’ve come a long way since then,” Harmon said. “My kickoffs went from 30 yards to right now 60. There was a lot of stuff in there, like trial and error, how you have to make contact with the ball at a certain place in the ball, about one-third up from the (bottom of) the ball to get the maximum swing and contact. If you hit it too low you’re going to get up under it and if you get too high it’s going to go straight. You have to hit the sweet spot.”
Not exactly the days of the old straightaway kicker with the square toe or intentionally oversized cleat that was tied up to form a flat kicking surface.
Mollohan said he knew he could succeed as a kicker when, during his freshman year, he went to a camp at West Virginia University.
“I was the youngest dude there,” Mollohan said. “I was still 13 years old and I was hanging with guys who were grading in 2020 and 2021. I was very shocked that I could hang with them.”
One trait the trio share is the foibles of superstition and ritual.
Harmon’s involves the actual art of the kick.
“Usually I would like to have (the ball) leaning to the right just a little bit,” Harmon said. “With the holder, when he gets the ball he’s going to line the nose of it to his eye so that will get the right angle for me to kick, because if the ball is straight up it’s going go like a UFO. It’s not going to be end over end.”
He said Jake Showalter has been his holder for the last two seasons.
“He knows what he is doing,” Harmon said. “I like him a lot. He gets it done.”
Mollohan said recent losses of friends like former teammate Dwayne Richardson and former Flying Eagles standout Aiden Shehan (class of 2020) have made him humble and he will take a more personal ritual into his kicking moving forward.
“When I take my steps back and I’m about ready to kick I say to myself, ‘Long Live Dwayne,’” Mollohan said of Richardson, who was shot and killed in a tragic accident in May. “Dwayne was a big part of my life. Dwayne was a hard-working guy. He was a very nice guy, a very smart guy. I’m just trying to aspire to be like him. Every time I’m back there I’m doing it for him and Aiden.”
For Vargo-Thomas, his superstition has to do with personnel.
“This may sound funny, but my long snapper, Braxton (Hall), he’s one of my best friends and I feel like whenever he is snapping that I’m locked in more and I do a little better,” he said. “It allows me to clear my mind and not think about (the kick). I know if I overthink it I can do something wrong. I just try to clear my mind and let my swing do the rest.”
As for kicking being easy, Harmon said give it a try.
“Anyone can just say kicking is easy because you only do one thing,” Harmon said. “But there are actually multiple steps. I think someone told me there are 17 different steps that you have to do. It’s like second nature to me because I’ve been doing it for three years. If someone says that it’s easy, I tell them to go try it and they do and it goes about five feet in the air. It just goes to show how hard kicking is.”
When you know, you know, Vargo-Thomas said. Most don’t if they think kicking is easy.
“They don’t know,” he said. “A big kick in the fourth quarter is a lot of pressure and you get very nervous. Everybody thinks it’s just something easy. It’s not. It takes a lot of practice and time.”
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