Long Snapping Lesson with Jordan Winegar and Travis Shackleton

Sunday Jan 27th I was able to meet up with freshman long snapper from St. Croix Central High School Jordan Winegar, and Senior long snapper from Baldwin-Woodville High School Travis Shackleton.

Jordan just started attending long snapping lessons last month while Travis has been a student of Special Teams University for 4 years.

Travis was one of my very first students. When I first got started coaching long snappers, the head coach at Baldwin-Woodville High School brought me in to work with a handful of young men that he thought would be good candidates to be his long snappers.

Long Snapping at the Kicking Pow Wow

Monday January 21st I was able to team up with Husted Kicking Coach Brady Beeson to put on a kicking tournament. The idea behind this was to get guys in one place and have some fun while doing a little competition for some prizes.

Brady was able to get some high caliber kickers from the high school level all the way to the arena football level. I was able to bring in 3 of my best long snappers to snap for these guys during their competition.

Since this was just for fun I didn't do a lot of coaching, but I was able to observe some things that I will be able to apply at our next long snapping lesson with all three guys that attended.

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.

Long Snapping Lessons with Nick Neumann and Jordan Winegar

Today I had a long snapping lesson with Jordan Winegar and Nick Neumann. Nick is from Inver Grove Heights Minnesota, Jordan is from Hammond Wisconsin, both are going to be freshman in high school.

Jordan attended long snapping camp on Dec 29th but this was my first lesson with both students. We started today very basic working on proper hand position and how to properly release the ball to get a tight spiral.

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.