Long Snapping Lesson with James Ring

By: Long Snapping Coach Kyle Stelter

March 24th 2013 I met up with James Ring for a long snapping lesson. James and I have been working for a few months now and you can tell by his long snapping that he has been working hard. If you have read previous posts on James you would know that he came to me as a beginning long snapper. We had to implement everything from the grip to the stance, to the correct motions to go through.

Long Snapping Lesson with Nick Clements

Today I had a long snapping lesson with Nick Clements who just recently got back with his tryout with the Nebraska Danger, an arena football team. Nick snapped very well and we will hopefully hear back from them soon.

Nick has decided that he not only wants to give arena football a try, but he wants to try and snap at the highest level he can. Nick has a long way to go but is very determined and works hard.

My first time meeting Nick was at camp this past December. During his charting, his snaps were averaging 1 second back to the punter at 15 yards and were all over the place. Obviously this is not ideal... Over the past month Nick and I have refined his snapping through long snapping lessons and he has now brought his snap time down to .88 seconds along with boosting his accuracy.

Ohio State Long Snapper Takes Long Snapping Lessons From Special Teams University

In January of 2011 I got a friend request from a long snapper at Ohio State University. This snapper was Tom Heffelfinger.

Tom is a very hard working long snapper who is undersized in stature, but not undersized in effort and ability. As soon as I accepted that request I started getting messages from him. Asking questions about long snapping, how to improve, how to become better.

Even though he was on the Ohio State football team, he was not the starter and very much wanted to get on the field. What started as tips here and there turned into full on virtual long snapping lessons.

Tom would send me film what felt like every week! Every clip of film he sent I could see how determined he was to get better. As you may know I would rather have a student that is the most determined and has a lot of heart over a student that just has raw talent. I know the long snapper with heart will work harder for what he wants.

Tom's form before we started working. The ball is beneath his head and he is really low with his hips.

Tom was obviously good enough of a long snapper to make it onto the Ohio State football team, but there were things I saw in his form that could be corrected.

Special Teams University Long Snapping Lesson with James Ring

December 30th 2012 I met up with James Ring and his father Dave for our second long snapping lesson. We met in Stillwater MN at the Stillwater Soccer Dome.

This facility is great because it is very large and is a great distance for me to get into MN and work with my clients there. The last time we had a long snapping lesson we focused on very basic aspects of snapping due to the fact that James was a beginner that had no previous long snapping instruction.

Winter NCS Camp Hosted by Special Teams University and Husted Kicking

December 29th 2012 Brady Beeson and I partnered up Husted Kicking and Special Teams University to put on a National Camp Series evaluation camp in Vadnais Heights Minnesota.

The camp was held in the Vadnais Heights Dome which was an extremely nice facility. We had enough room for all 15 of our athletes to compete and learn. I had a total of 4 long snappers attend the portion of the clinic that I was coaching.

Special Teams University Long Snapping Lesson with James Ring

Dec 27th 2012 I met up with James Ring and his father Dave for our first long snapping lesson together. James is a student at The Blake High School in Minnesota. While talking with James I found out that he has snapped in 8th grade and this past year for his football team but has had no prior instruction to long snapping.

Usually during a first lesson I like to cover the basics of what I teach and get a feel for what the student knows and can do already. We started off by checking his grip which was good, we were on the same page, then we went into how to properly release the ball. James was able to get a spiral before but was not releasing the ball quite the way I would like him to.