Dittmeyer doing his part for unbeaten Owls

There was a time when many felt that soccer might replace football as one of the more popular sports in the United State, however, over the years as the local soccer programs produced good placement kickers for football teams, that thinking seemed to vanish.

These days the football and soccer programs work pretty much in harmony due in part to the timing of the seasons with football in the fall and soccer in the spring.

Elgin senior kicker Gabe Dittmeyer is like many Lawton-area kids who started sports playing in the Lawton Soccer Club at the tender ages of 3 or 4. Now he’s 6-2, 170 pounds and is one of the more dependable kickers in Class 5A football.

“I started playing football in the seventh grade,” he said. “They asked if anyone had kicked and I said I hadn’t but I told them I could do it.”

As he quickly learned, few junior high coaches even practice point-after tries and even fewer give it a test during a game.

“I was sure wanting to try to kick PATs but the coaches said they never tried them in a game, so we didn’t even practice them,” he said. “Finally during my freshman season, I got to start kicking them.”

The key to being a good kicker involves timing, technique and leg strength.

“I’ve been getting stronger every season,” he said. “Normally I lift when we have our hour-long weight class and we also lift during summer pride workouts. And we also lift during the season.

“You have to keep lifting weights to get better and improve your range,” he said. “it always helps your soccer skills as well.”

While Dittmeyer may very well get some offers to kick at some of the state NCAA Division II schools, that’s not something he’s focused on.

“I’m not thinking about kicking in college and haven’t been even looking,” he said.

That pretty much means these final four district games and then the playoffs will be his final experience on the gridiron.

“My goal is for us to win a state title and then it will be time to retire,” he said.

While many kickers do play other positions, not Dittmeyer.

“I remember playing wide receiver for a time my freshman season,” he said. “We had some seniors who were playing wide receiver decided to quit and the coaches asked some of us to step up and fill those voids. It was OK but not something I wanted to do all the time.”

Over the years we’ve heard students share their thoughts on their favorite class and Dittmeyer hit this writer with a totally different subject.

“My favorite class is Mythology,” he said. “I’ve always been interested in medieval stuff and I really enjoyed learning about those times.”

While he’s not thinking about that as a college field of study, he does plan on attending college somewhere.

“I’m still trying to figure it out,” he said. “I’ve never been a big science guy; my favorites were always history and math. I’m not sure what I will major in but I plan to go to college.”

While kickers aren’t the big eaters on any team, Dittmeyer can hold his own at the table, especially if great-grandmother Jo Dittmeyer is serving up her homemade noodles with brown gravy.

While kickers are often outcasts of sorts in some programs, not at Elgin and Dittmeyer is all into what the Owls have been accomplishing.

“Those last two games last season were sure not fun,” he said. “And Noble, we can’t wait to play they them. I think this team is capable of winning out but we have to stay locked in and focus on our goals in practice.”

While he is in the middle of the team on the sidelines during games, during practice you will find Dittmeyer off to the side of the field with a couple of trainers practicing his kicks.

“I used to wait until after practice and stay for 30 minutes or so and practice,” he said. “Now I just go to the side where they aren’t practicing and kick over there.”

On game nights Dittmeyer comes out early, “finds the wind” direction and then kicks 10 or so kickoffs into the wind and 10 or so with the wind.

“The main thing I’m doing is figuring out how the wind is going to affect my kicks,” he said. “Normally the coaches have a game plan of when we might have to try a field goal, plus they have a plan when it comes to kickoff placement. We sometimes want to kick away from certain receivers and that’s where the coaches come in with their game plan.”

Dittmeyer said there has been no need to kick field goals since all their wins have been by large margins and those leads have also not called for onside kicks.

On game nights Dittmeyer “is just one of the guys. I have a good relationship with all these guys. I get along with everyone.”

He also gave the current coaching staff a great deal of credit for the on-field success.

“These coaches hold us to a different standard,” Dittmeyer said. “They want us to always do the things we are capable of doing. The other coaches before didn’t hold us to those standards and it wasn’t good for our team. This group of coaches work us hard but they are always there to teach us the things we need to know.”