MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – I must admit, the first time I saw Oliver Straw punt during preseason camp last fall I thought to myself, “Oh boy, they sent the wrong punter from Australia!”
Many of his punts looked just like my golf tee shots until I heeded the expert advice of taking two weeks off before quitting.
But now, after a year of college football under his belt, Straw is a much different punter than the one we first saw in practice this time last year. In more than 35 years of watching college football practices, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone improve so drastically in such a short period of time.
The 6-foot-2, 210 pounder went on to have a solid freshman season, punting 48 times for an average of 42.3 yards per punt. Seventeen of those landed inside the opponents’ 20-yard line. More importantly, just seven of those 48 punts were returned for a measly 19 yards, meaning 85.4% of them were not returned. That’s an improvement from West Virginia’s 77.4% non-return rate in 2021 and its 73.9% non-return rate in 2020.
“We are a team that wants to be a fair-catch team, so hang time is important,” West Virginia coach Neal Brown said Wednesday.
Opponents are returning so few punts not just because Straw can kick it high, but also because he can make the ball do strange things. It spins. It wobbles. It flutters and sometimes it even knuckles. You name it, he can make a football do it, and with either foot! Trying to catch his punts is almost like eating soup with a fork – impossible.
Brown says Straw’s versatility is probably his most impressive trait.
“I mean, he can kick it right-footed or left-footed. He can spiral and he can kick it end over end. He can kick it to where it spins. He’s got all the tools from a kicking perspective,” he explained. “He can kick it in the pocket. He can roll out each way, so he gives us a lot of flexibility in our protections.”
Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, and maintaining dual citizenship in the United States and Australia, Straw is a product of Prokick Australia, which is becoming an assembly line of punters for college football programs. Its founders, Nathan Chapman and John Smith, told Tim Casey of Forbes Magazine last January that their program has produced approximately 75 college kickers since its inception in 2007.
In 2009, the first three Prokick-trained punters signed college scholarships. By 2013, Memphis punter Tom Hornsey became the first Australian to win the Ray Guy Award given to college football’s top punter, and since then, the award has predominantly gone to Australians: Utah’s Tom Hackett in 2014-15, Utah’s Mitch Wishnowsky in 2016, Texas’ Michael Dickson in 2017, Kentucky’s Max Duffy in 2019 and Rutgers’ Adam Korsak in 2022.
Both starting punters in last year’s national championship game – Georgia’s Brett Thorson and TCU’s Jordy Sandy – are Prokick alums.
Not only can these guys punt, but most of them are extremely athletic because of their backgrounds in either Australian Rules football or rugby. They’re used to having bodies flying around them and are not bothered by the multiple launch points permitted in the college game today.
“He understands the game,” Brown said. “That’s the thing that probably doesn’t get talked about is he understands our protections, so he understands where it’s weak and he can help us out as far as how he positions himself.”
Australian punters are also used to handling pressure.
“Any time you can witness people have to perform under pressure, those are competition reps and pressure reps and Oli over in Australia had these intense, competitive reps versus grown men and had to perform,” Brown pointed out.
Obviously, punting is drastically different today than it was during the days when guys like Ray Guy could take three steps, drop the ball and boom kicks far down the field. It’s also drastically different from pro to college.
Brown explains.
“In the NFL, you’ve got the same launch point because that’s what the rules dictate. In college, we’ve got multiple launch points so that’s probably the biggest difference between a traditional punter and kind of what a lot of the college game has gone to,” he said.
What the college game is moving toward is basically rugby kickers capable of handling stressful situations.
For instance, during last year’s Oklahoma State victory, Straw made the play of the game when he remained calm enough to pick up a ball that he dropped and got off a punt in extremely adverse conditions late in the game. Had he not, Oklahoma State likely comes out on top.
“We used that example the other day,” Brown noted. “This quote gets overused now and it’s a Navy SEAL deal, but it’s very true. It’s basically, ‘You fall to the level of your training.’ We worked that all the time. It was the only snap he dropped, but he was so calm. It was pouring rain and about 35 degrees and he circles the ball, just like he is supposed to, picks it up and gets it off.
“That shows he’s even keeled, and he doesn’t get too up or too down,” Brown added. “He wasn’t one of those guys who dropped it, was looking at his hands and beating his helmet. He just did what he was supposed to do and got the ball off. That was a rugby move because that happens all the time in that game.”
Now a sophomore, Straw is considered among the team’s leaders this year.
“He’s a little bit older – not as old as some of the Australians coming over – and he’s handled his success,” Brown concluded.
No on-field activities are scheduled for today. The Mountaineers have a light workout scheduled for Friday morning ahead of Saturday night’s scrimmage inside the stadium.
