Free State High senior Kale Joyce has toured the country on punting camps this summer to improve his game. Joyce, who has realistic dreams of playing Div. I football, is ranked No. 9 in the country by Kohl’s Kicking for punters in the Class of 2012.

Thirteen months ago, Free State High senior Kale Joyce stood in a field near a small private lake in West Lawrence and wondered why he was punting footballs.

It was the day Kale’s older brother, Alek, graduated from Free State. The Joyces were celebrating the big day with family and friends.

After being encouraged to try punting by family friend Dean Zagortz, a former soccer player and punter at Kansas State University, Kale agreed to give it a chance.

The pair walked over to the field, footballs in tow.

“I was shaking my head, walking with my head down on the way over there, thinking this would be a waste of time,” Kale said.

Last week, a little more than a year after he started punting, Kale, fresh off a whirlwind tour of punting camps all over the country, sat at a table in his family’s backyard, recalling just how he became one of the top punters in the Midwest.

He’s been named a five-star recruit and the ninth-ranked punter in the Class of 2012 by Kohl’s Kicking, a prominent kicking evaluation group. In 2008-2009, 76 percent of five-star recruits ranked by Kohl’s Kicking earned spots on Div. I football teams.

It all started with those kicks on his brother’s graduation day. That fateful day, along with Kale’s work in the last 13 months, could lead to a college football scholarship.

Kale traveled to his first specialist’s camp, the Ray Guy Kicking Academy, about a month after seriously working on punting for the first time in his life.

“I had no idea what I was doing going into it,” Kale said.

By working hard on his technique in the drills, Kale quickly improved and developed a passion for the intricacies of dropping a ball onto his foot and sending it as far and as high as possible.

In order to catch the punters with more experience, Kale had to refine the craft nearly every day. That kind of perseverance from a teenager still impresses Zagortz, who works with Kale’s mother, Holli.

“He’s that kind of kid,” Zagortz said. “He focuses, and then he attacks.”

Kale became even more serious after punting for Free State in his junior year. He started filling out dozens of recruiting questionnaires, emailing college coaches and scouting college rosters for potential vacancies at punter.

At the start of this summer, Kale traveled to a specialists’ camp at the University of Oklahoma. There, he met up with Patrick O’Hara, a junior kicker at Oklahoma originally from Topeka.

O’Hara told Kale that he should try to hit the six-story-high ceiling of the practice facility in order to impress the coaches.

“I walked in there and I said, ‘Man, I don’t know if I can hit the ceiling,'” Kale said. “By the end of it, I think about 85 percent of my punts were hitting the ceiling.”

From Norman, Kale went to the specialists’ camp at the University of Alabama, where he beat out some 180 other specialists for a spot on the All-Saban Team, in reference to Alabama coach Nick Saban.

He continued his journey in the next few weeks, stopping for camps at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Iowa and K-State. With most of the camps now over for the summer, Kale finally has time to promote himself to college coaches.

He posts videos of his punts in competition on YouTube — username “KalerKicks” — hoping to catch the eye of a recruiter.

Some punting scouts think his hand-to-kick time needs to drop by a split second, but Kale said his confidence and work ethic will continue to set him apart from others.

“In my mind, there’s nothing stopping me but myself,” Kale said.

Added Zagortz: “It’s all mental. And he’s a strong mental kid.”

Until football season starts, Kale will be working on his punting technique nearly every day, either at Free State or Lawrence High.

Free State sophomore Reid Buckingham has been working hard on his long snapping technique at Kale’s urging, so the pair often tries to practice together.

Kale is focusing on improving his consistency, so he can boot punts of 50 yards with 4.8-second hangtime — a high standard of excellence — more regularly in game situations.

And the haters, the people that say punting is for guys who can’t get on the field on offense or defense, don’t bother Kale.

“It’s one of those positions that really gets overlooked quite a bit,” Kale said. “I think a lot of people don’t realize how much goes into being able to consistently punt or kick or snap the ball the same way.”