How an NFL great guided Daniel Lester’s kicking journey to South Carolina

South Carolina football commit Daniel Lester gazed at the two poles extending into the air behind the soccer net before him. They provided a target of sorts, though they were designed to hold the net in place rather than function as football goalposts.

Standing over the football perched on the turf 30 yards from the goal, Lester took three steps back and another two to his left. He squared, stepped toward the ball and booted it.

The ball tailed right — wayyyyyyy right.

“The ball went out and it could have gone out for a throw-in,” Lester said. “It went the whole opposite direction.”

Lester was raw. But there was a strength to the kick that differed from your average high school kid. There was a pop, or a thud, when Lester’s right foot connected with leather.

The soccer coach who’d coaxed Lester into the attempt applauded the effort and assured the accuracy would come with practice. The patience and synchronicity needed to perfect kicking take time. It wouldn’t click in one afternoon.

Lester’s West Florida Flames soccer club coach, Martín Gramática, would know. Gramática parlayed a conversion from soccer to a nine-year NFL kicking career. His 65-yard field goal for Kansas State in 1998 also remains the longest kick in college football history without the use of a tee.

“Most people think if you play soccer you can be a kicker. That’s not the case,” Gramática told The State. “You have to work at it, and it’s a different kick.”

Grámatica has avoided coaching kicking full-time. The Flames take up much of his time — as do three kids, a radio gig and providing Spanish language analysis for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during the season.

Lester, though, is a part of a small group of local specialists the former NFL player coaches for free.

On Sunday, those lessons culminated in Lester’s commitment to South Carolina as a preferred walk-on.

“Ever since I was 2 years old, my dad had a soccer ball at my feet,” Lester said. “So it was a lot to think about and it was a hard decision. But we just had the conversation because Martín had grown up playing soccer his whole life and he had to make the transition as well.”

Working with an NFL kicking legend

Lester has spent years playing football. Focusing on kicking, though, is a more recent revelation.

He played tight end and linebacker in middle school and into high school. He’d kicked and punted some, but never firmly committed to it.

Soccer remained Lester’s first love. He quips there aren’t too many forwards running around the fields of South Florida at 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds.

Lester was always a presence in the 18-yard box. His throw-ins were the stuff of legend.

“His throw-in was a weapon. We missed those, man,” Gramática joked. “Any time we crossed midfield and he’d throw-in, he’d put them in the box. It was kind of like a corner kick.”

Lester hoped soccer might carry him to a college scholarship. But offers are less common in soccer than they are in football. Men’s soccer gives 9.9 scholarships under NCAA rules. FBS football programs are allotted 85 per year.

That aforementioned afternoon after soccer practice served as his foray into full-time kicking. Gramática asked him to line up a few kicks. Lester obliged.

Time and time again, the kicks faded right.

Gramática encouraged his newest pupil. He wouldn’t master the craft that afternoon, but the tools were there.

“That was the most humbling experience of my life,” Lester said. “I was kicking in front of one of the best of all time — Super Bowl champion, amazing kicker, amazing person, amazing guy — and I was just terrible.”

A kicker’s recruiting process

The recruiting process for kickers differs vastly from skill-position players or defensive standouts. Most specialists travel for camps through a handful of organizations that put on events nationwide.

Brandon Kornblue, a punter and kicker on Michigan’s 1997 national championship team, started Kornblue Kicking in 2007 to provide more exposure for specialists.

Kornblue’s events operate like a combine. Players are measured on punt, kick and kickoff distances. Hang times are logged. Field-goal attempts are jotted down.

Lester’s parents had previously chatted with Kornblue about joining the circuit in the summer of 2021. Daniel’s work with Gramática progressed enough that he hoped to perform in front of scouts.

A two-minute and 30-second highlight film of Lester’s first camp at Florida International University in Miami resides on YouTube. Punts of 40, 44, 47 and 50 yards are recorded. So, too, are field goal makes of 20, 30 and 40 yards without a tee. That’s not to mention the 67-, 68- and 73-yard kickoff attempts.

“What some of these bigger showcase events and some of these camps can do for kids is, it helps them realize, one, they either need to improve to get to where they want to be, or, ‘I’m there. I have that ability and I should really make sure I’m putting time and effort into it because I’ve got a future,’ ” Kornblue told The State.

Korblue Kicking’s in-house rankings promptly slotted Lester, as he remembers it, as the 13th- or 14th-best kicker in the country. He has since been named a five-star prospect and the No. 6 kicker in the 2022 class, per Kornblue’s rankings.

His camp travels took him nationwide. Stops in Michigan, West Virginia and South Carolina were sandwiched between camps in Florida and Texas. College interest followed.

Lester also loaded up his gray, lifted Toyota Tundra and trekked the 150 miles from his home on the north side of Tampa down to Fort Myers every day for a week in December to practice for the FCA East-West Classic game. His 45-yard kick in the game that weekend set a record for the event.

“I didn’t tell them they needed to come to all these different locations,” Kornblue said. “... But they did just because I think (Daniel) wanted to do everything he could to keep showing his potential, his talent.”

Landing a South Carolina Gamecocks offer

Driving to a basketball game last week, Lester’s phone buzzed. South Carolina special teams coordinator Pete Lembo’s name popped up on his iPhone screen.

Lembo had spearheaded Lester’s recruitment for a few months. The pair initially connected over their New York ties (Lembo is originally from Staten Island, while Lester grew up in New York). Lester felt a comfort in the relationship. If an offer came, he’d pounce on it.

That call finally came.

“I can’t remember how I got from point A to point B,” Lester conceded jokingly. “I was just on the phone.”

Being a preferred walk-on guarantees Lester a spot on the roster but no financial assistance to start his college career. He can also enroll and participate in preseason workouts at the same time as scholarship athletes.

Lester joins a South Carolina specialist group in need of new depth. Sixth-year senior and all-time scoring leader Parker White has exhausted his eligibility.

Mitch Jeter and Alex Herrera handled kickoff duties in varying capacities last fall and figure to have a shot at the starting place-kicker role. Lester, too, wants to compete for the starting role from Day 1.

Asked how Lester might factor in as a freshman, Gramática joked that he was the fifth-string kicker when he arrived at Kansas State. He finished his career as one of college football’s most decorated specialists.

His pupil remains raw, but that left-to-right fade has been sorted out. Lester has found a groove in his approach to the ball.

He’s long since graduated from missing wide right on the frame of a soccer goal. This fall, he’ll aim for the goalposts at Williams-Brice Stadium.