High school football: Avon Lake's Owen Wiley kicking up a storm in first year on the field

While Avon Lake junior Owen Wiley's football career is just a few months old, the preparation for this season has been happening for years. "I bought footballs with my birthday money during my freshman year," said Wiley, who played one year of flag football as a youth. "I started going up to the high school (and kicking) and I was like, 'This is pretty cool. I should start taking this seriously.' I knew when Harry Hebert left, the spot would be open so I thought I might as well come in and see what I could do … and here I am." Wiley is second on the Shoremen's scoring list after making 10 of 13 field-goal attempts and all 36 of his PAT kicks. Reaching double digits in field goals made is a rare feat during a normal high school season, so Wiley hitting the mark during a regular season that was shortened from 10 games to six, and with a couple playoff games, is a pretty notable accomplishment. "He's been kicking extremely well. I don't know if it's been so many field goals or we need to produce more touchdowns in the red zone," Avon Lake coach Matt Kostelnik said with a laugh. "In the playoffs, we've looked at who's been successful over the last few years and you have to have a running game, you have to play defense and you've gotta be able to kick the ball. Those are just essentials." Like many high school football kickers, Wiley is also a member of the school's soccer team. "They just won a playoff game, so he's double-dipping right now," Kostelnik said. Wiley said he's part of the defense on the soccer team, so booting the ball as hard as he can feels natural. But he knows there is more technique involved when the ball changes from round to oblong, so once he made the decision to kick footballs he decided to get some help. "The first time I started kicking, I wasn't the best. I had to keep working," Wiley said. "I've been going to some kicking camps around Ohio and that's been helping me out a lot, as far as teaching me the proper way to kick. I've been watching videos, just trying to work on my technique and I started to perfect it a little bit. It's just easy for me now, I guess." Wiley attended a Kohl's Professional kicking camp in Toledo last weekend and took part in the Kicking World camp in Columbus during the summer. "There was a kicking competition in that camp and I won it and got invited to a national showcase in Austin, Texas, this December," he said. When Wiley approached Kostelnik about becoming the team's kicker the coach said he would have to put in the same offseason work as the other football players, which became trying as Wiley was also balancing soccer practices and games. "He was lifting hard, doing everything for his team and made it to everything we had, overall he's just been a fantastic kid, teammate, everything," Kostelnik said. "Because of his character as a kid, he was just doing too much. He was running all our sprints, all of our stuff and then going to soccer and doing all their stuff. At one point he had a game where he just did not look right. "So we had to actually dial him back. But, again, that's just the kind of kid he is. If he's all in, he's all in." "He came to me and talked to me a couple weeks ago," Wiley said. "He said, 'I want you to start taking it easy. I need your leg for the playoffs coming up and I don't want you to overdo anything.' So I email him every week and let him know what days I'll come and how long I'm going to stay, and all I do is go there and kick so that I'm not wasting my leg." Wiley's longest field goal is 42 yards this season — two of his misses were from 45 and 53 yards — but he said his range has the potential to grow a lot farther. "Longest I've ever made was 60 when I was fooling around up at the high school," said Wiley, whose goal is to hit a 50-yarder during his high school career. "(Kostelnik) knows I have a huge leg. He sees me doing it at practice every day. He knows what I can do. He sent me out for a 53-yarder against Berea and I missed that left, but he knows he can send me out there for those big kicks." Just like any other phase in football, Wiley knows the kicking game can't be successful just because of his efforts. "I have to give a shout out to Michael Stuewe, too, he's just an amazing holder," Wiley said. "Even it there's a bad snap he somehow manages to get it down. He's helped me out a lot. Same thing with Billy Simpson, the long snapper, he's put it in Stuewe's hands every time and in my hands on every punt. They're just both great guys." Wiley has also made way several times this season for Julia Hurd, who has made five PAT attempts and is the first female to score points in program history. "She's been doing so great this year," Wiley said. "She's a junior as well, plays soccer as well. It's awesome having a female kicker out there and she's the first one to make an extra point in the playoffs. It's so cool watching her do that. "I definitely try to help her out whenever I can. Our special teams coach has been doing a great job with both of us." The Shoremen have been reaping the rewards, which is an unexpected benefit as Wiley has only been a team member for a matter of months. "For a kid that didn't even come out until the spring and on a whim … I didn't know what he was going to be able to do," Kostelnik said. "He's calm and cool. He showed that with the two kicks in overtime — the 30-yarders — against Avon in Week 1." Wiley said the feeling of watching the football sail through the uprights in the season opener was pretty special. "Going out there and kicking my first one, all these nerves just hit me. I was like, 'I can't believe I'm actually doing this,'" he said. "After the first couple kicks I got kind of used to it and now every game I really don't get nervous. It feels like something I've been doing all my life even though I've only been doing it a couple months." Contact Shaun Bennett at 329-7137 or sbennett@chroniclet.com. Like him on Facebook and follow him @ShaunBennettct on Twitter.