photo by: Scott Donaldson/South Alabama Athletics

South Alabama kicker Laith Marjan kicks during a game against Texas State, Friday, Nov. 29, 2024, in Mobile, Ala.

Kansas kicker Laith Marjan says that whenever he misses a field goal, he takes it personally.

Fortunately for Marjan, he didn’t miss often in 2024 — at least during games. In his first year as a collegiate placekicker, after serving as a kickoff specialist at East Carolina, Marjan went 16-for-17 with South Alabama, with just the one kick from 50 yards into the wind against Northwestern State providing a source of frustration.

But the transfer still has plenty he can learn from whenever he’s off the mark in practice. KU’s special teams coach, Taiwo Onatolu, calls Marjan “a very confident guy, very meticulous with what he does, extremely competitive.”

“If he misses, I mean, he wants to see the film, he’s going to break it down, he’s going to have an answer,” Onatolu said. “He’s an extremely competitive guy and I’m fired up about him.”

As Marjan puts it, you don’t want to be missing field goals in a variety of ways. Usually an error can be attributed to one of a few factors.

“I look for my plant foot, where’s it angled, what’s the width like,” he said. “A lot of us, we kind of think of kicking like golf. So you want your club, or your foot — we call it the wedge — to match to the ball well. When those things go right, the kick is good. Those are just some of the things that I look for.”

Also key to his success is maintaining his composure.

“Everybody has their thing,” Marjan said. “I think Coach (Kyle) Deween does a really good job of telling us when you’re doing well, you can’t get too high, and when you’re doing bad, you can’t get too low. You constantly have to master the ability to stay kind of level-headed. And I think that’s the biggest challenge.”

On Friday, Marjan was selected to the preseason watchlist for the Lou Groza Award, which goes to the nation’s best placekicker. He was a semifinalist for the same award last season and a second-team All-Sun Belt selection.

Those are high honors for a kicker who, he said, was told at ECU that he “wasn’t good enough” and “all (he) was going to be was a walk-on.” All that gave him added motivation heading into his successful season with the Jaguars.

“You combine that with the resources that South Alabama gave me,” Marjan said. “I had to compete for that spot, I had to fight for it, but once I did and I won it, they gave me the resources, they gave me the confidence and the platform, and then you mix that with my work ethic and just having that chip on your shoulder and it kind of came together.”

KU’s overall environment appealed to Marjan when he was picking a new school in the portal, but the fifth-year senior, originally from Raleigh, N.C., was also drawn to the school’s Master of Business Administration program and its alumni network.

When he arrived in Lawrence he was the Jayhawks’ only kicker, after the departures of last year’s trio that consisted of Tabor Allen (the starter), Owen Piepergerdes and Charlie Weinrich. When the summer came, freshman Dane Efird, from Branson, Mo., joined the unit.

“It was really nice actually because I was kind of lonely in the spring,” Marjan said. “We would be doing drills, and it’s like I’m the only guy there.”

Besides providing companionship, Efird also serves as an analogous kicker to Marjan in terms of their physical frames. (Marjan is listed at 6-foot-2, 210 pounds, while Efird is 6-foot-3 and 190.)

“Naturally he does some of the same things I do and has some of (the) form that I do,” Marjan said. “It’s been good for me, because when we work on stuff, it’s like even if we’re helping him, it’s also helping me, because it’s reiterating it in my mind. And he’s a great kid. He’s awesome, he’s fun to hang around. He’s been a really good addition to the room.”

Efird previously told the Journal-World that part of KU’s sales pitch during his recruitment was the idea that he could learn from Marjan during his first year and compete for a starting spot (and possibly earn a scholarship) going forward.

This coming season, though, the Jayhawks can rely on Marjan’s veteran experience. And they may be able to rely on him from as far away as 57 yards, which he said on Tuesday was the farthest back that head coach Lance Leipold has tested him in practice to that point. His longest successful kick at South Alabama was 49.

“I think if we needed it, he’d put me out there for a 58,” Marjan said. “But obviously I don’t want to speculate for him. I feel that he has confidence in me and I have confidence that if they put me out there, I’m capable. Whatever he gives me, I’ll go do it.”

And if it doesn’t work out, he’ll know where to look to try and fix it.