Long Snapping Lesson with Valparaiso Long Snapper

By: Long Snapping Coach Mike Famiglietti

In the Summer of 2014 I was reunited with a long snapper I had experience with before, Wesley Manderscheid. We played against each other our senior year of high school and am now very impressed with him as both a long snapper and a person.

Long Snapping in the rain

Wesley is a very talented long snapper who has great size, good technique, and much experience with snapping at the college level and in poor weather. He is entering his final year at Valparaiso University and has aspirations of continuing to snap at the next level. With the strides he has made today, I say we should all look out for this long snapper to make waves in the near future.

Wesley and I initially long snapped out on the field, but the weather soon turned awful, but not before we got some film to watch and evaluate. The spiral was the main issue that needed work and the changes to it gave him more power. His accuracy was always good and continued to stay consistent with the changes we made.

Balance needed to be worked on to get more power out of his legs and increase the velocity of his long snaps. Balance is very important for long snappers so we continued with bench drill which he had never done before after we focused on leg extension and follow through. This made him more comfortable with the changes we made. Then to fix the spiral after we added the power, we adjusted the placement of his hands on the ball. This instantly gave him a perfect spiral that will only get better in time.

The most impressive part of the whole long snapping lesson was how impressive his short snaps were. Outside they were all performed in the rain and had perfect placement and speed. It was very impressive with a heavy wet ball. He has been the field goal snapper at Valparaiso since his freshman year and has had much success with it and it should continue. When we went inside the short snaps were even more impressive, especially after the hand changes to his spiral. All of them were perfect laces and even better location.

Showing great form on short snaps

Wesley should be looking forward to having a big year, with a little more size and some more refinement he will definitely be looking at some big opportunities in his future.

- Long Snapping Coach Mike Famiglietti

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