Safety blanket: Putt overcomes rare blood disorder to become 100-point kicker for Tygers
MANSFIELD ― As a toddler, Mansfield Senior's Sean Putt always pictured himself as a football player.
He let his imagination run wild with thoughts of sporting the golden dome helmet of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and playing on Saturdays at Notre Dame Stadium. He had a "Play like a Champion Today" sign he would slap just like his favorite college football players. He knew he wanted his future to include football.
Until it didn't. Or at least, not to the extent he wished it had.
As a young child, Putt was diagnosed with chronic idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), a rare blood disorder that leaves his blood with an abnormal decrease in the number of platelets, which leaves him susceptible to easy bruising, bleeding of the gums and even internal bleeding.
Not exactly what you want to have as a player in a contact sport. So, Putt changed his approach to sports and, instead, picked up soccer, still a contact sport, but less dangerous than football given his condition. Putt still takes weekly chemotherapy shots to this day.
But, he still loved football and still had a very strong desire to play the sport he grew up loving. As his soccer skills grew and grew, Putt became better and better at the game. So, he decided to use his foot skills to fulfill his football dreams as he tried out for the Mansfield Senior football team as a freshman.
"Growing up, doctors diagnosed me with a chronic blood disorder," Putt said. "They never allowed me to play a contact sport so I spent a lot of my time kicking a soccer ball around the backyard. But at a young age I fell in love with football and I watched my favorite team, Notre Dame, every Saturday. I was given the opportunity my freshman year to come out and kick with the team, and that was a blessing."
It was a blessing for Putt and a blessing for the Tygers. Putt was a freshman at St. Peter's High School and, according to an Ohio High School Athletic Association bylaw, a private school student who wishes to play a sport that is not offered at his or her school can play that sport at the public high school in which the student resides. So, Putt became a Tyger, and it has worked out ever since.
For his career, Putt is 73 for 79 on extra-point attempts for a cool 92.1% success rate. He is 13 for 18 on field goal attempts (72.2%) with a long of 35 yards, although he is known for drilling 40-plus yarders in practice to get his teammates out of conditioning. He has scored 112 total points in his Tygers career and still has three regular-season games and at least one playoff game to go.
"Sean is a very intricate piece of our puzzle," Mansfield Senior coach Chioke Bradley said. "He is over 100 points for his career and his only job is kicker. That is very impressive. Without him, we don't go. He is a major part of our team and a senior leader with his work ethic. A lot of people don't know, but he is fiesty. He is small in stature, but he is a fiery guy who can hold his own. It is a blessing to have him every day."
Putt feels blessed to be a Tyger
As much of a blessing Bradley feels Putt is to the Tygers, Putt believes it is a blessing to be a Tyger.
As a young child, Putt spent a lot of time in hospitals getting treatment for his chronic ITP. His chemo shots drain his energy, but football gives him a shot of adrenaline every day at practice. It has been good for him since he was a freshman and it gives him something to work toward as he hopes to kick at the next level and become a college football player.
It didn't start out that way. Putt tried out for the Tygers as a freshman without ever kicking a football before in his life. He was a soccer player through and through. But he tried it out and the love for kicking grew stronger by the day. He spent weeks and weeks at practice working on his technique. Even when practice was over and no one was around, Putt would use the lights of the city shining down on Arlin Field to get some extra work in.
During the COVID-19 quarantine, Putt regularly jumped the fence of Arlin Field with a football and holding sticks in hand and spent countless hours setting the ball up and kicking it through the uprights. He would go from left hash to right hash, 20-yard line to 40-yard line, booting field goals, chasing down the ball and setting it up again. He wanted to stay ready for when football started up again so he could help the Tygers in any way possible.
The sneak-in trips to Arlin Field didn't stop after quarantine either.
"Sometimes, I drive by Arlin Field at 8 or 9 p.m. and I see him out here kicking," Bradley said. "He jumps the fence and gets out on the field getting his kicks in. He shows up for school and gets his kicks in. It means a lot to him and he wants to kick at the college level and that is what it takes. He is a leader of the special teams and it is so important to have him here."
Kicking for the Tygers gave Putt a sense of pride and purpose. It truly was a blessing.
Putt puts on a show against Ashland
During last week's 27-20 win over Ashland, Putt had one of the best performances of his career. He went 3 for 3 on PATs and drilled field goals of 29 and 28 yards. For the season, Putt is 23 for 24 on PATs and 2 for 2 on field goals as Week 7 was finally the time for him to trot out for a field goal. He had two other chances, but bad snaps kept him from getting a foot on the ball.
The performance was huge for Putt's confidence.
"It was because it was my first actual field goal attempts this season," Putt said. "We have had a couple that were botched snaps so it was nice to finally get a chance to kick one through. As a unit, it was the first time that it was in a high-intensity moment of the game and the kick could make or break us. For me, it was all about staying ready."
It was big for Mansfield Senior offensive coordinator Jacob Owens's confidence as well. As the Tygers struggled to throw the football against Ashland, they ran it 51 times for 290 yards and had a couple of drives falter in the red zone. Instead of making a risky call to go for it on fourth down, Owens urged Bradley to send Putt out to get some points.
In the fourth quarter, Owens looked over at the scoreboard from his spot in the press box and saw the Tygers leading Ashland 27-20 with the Arrows possessing the ball on the Tygers 6-yard line. Had it not been for Putt's two field goals, it would have been 21-20 and the Arrows could have just booted the game-winning field goal themselves. Instead, the Tygers defense came up with a huge sack and ended the game.
"He is a safety blanket," Owens said of Putt. "He has been consistent his entire career. It makes my job so much easier when we get into the red zone area to know that if we get stopped I can tell Chioke to take the points. That helped us against Ashland. It gave us that cushion in the fourth quarter when we needed it. I looked at the scoreboard and it was 27-20 instead of 21-20 without his kicks. He is a great kid and deserves all of the credit he gets."
Owens sees how seriously Putt takes his job and was happy to see him rewarded.
"He does," Owens said. "I am really happy for Sean. He does a great job working on his craft and making sure he is ready on Friday night. You ask him if he is ready to kick a 40-yarder and without hesitation he is always ready."
Putt vows to always stay ready
As a high school kicker who doesn't play another position, there isn't a ton of time spent on the field on Friday nights. Putt's situation is no different.
"There is a lot of downtime as a kicker," he said. "I am usually on the sidelines messing around, but when the offense has the ball and we get in the red zone it is time for me to lock in. When I get on the field for that one play and that one kick, I have to make sure it is worth it so I can contribute to the team."
To stay mentally locked in is tough, but Putt has his own unique ways of doing so. He admits he does his best to not pay a lot of attention to the game itself, but when his number is called he is always ready.
"It is pretty tough, but it is part of the job, it is what I signed up for," Putt said. "You have to block out a lot of the noise from the outside. When I am on the sidelines, I try to do my best to not pay a ton of attention to the game because if it is a close game that just adds to the pressure. I just try to keep in my own element and go out and do my thing."
And time after time, he does his thing. And he isn't afraid to let people know about it either. Bradley calls Putt one of the best trash talkers on the team. It is the soccer player in him.
"We welcomed him with open arms," Bradley said. "He is a soccer kid at heart and he has really gotten serious about kicking. Not to mention, he talks more smack that any kid on the team. He may be the smallest, but he doesn't back down. He does a great job for us, and we hope he can continue to kicking those things right down the middle."
Putt helps Tygers soccer, too
Putt is a two-sport fall athlete at Mansfield Senior, which he attends full time since last year. This fall, the Tygers boys soccer team is 7-5 through the first 12 games — its highest win total since 2013 when it went 11-5-2. The seven wins matches the total number of wins for the Tygers from 2018-2021, and the 2021 Tygers won four games.
It is a huge step in the right direction and it is thanks to senior leaders like Putt, who has five goals and an assist this season. He took it upon himself to become a leader.
"The first thing I noticed was we had a lot of kids who could play soccer, but we didn't have a lot of soccer players," Putt said. "Surrounding schools, you have kids who play soccer year round, but here we had kids who were playing as a secondary sport to stay active in the fall. Now we have a nice group that had a good background in soccer.
"We also have a new coach in Coach DeBolt, who puts us through soccer drills, and we have something special when it comes to Mansfield Senior soccer. This is an up-and-coming program that has put in a lot of hard work."
While the Tygers aren't to the standard of Lexington, Wooster and Madison in the Ohio Cardinal Conference, they are taking steps in the right direction. Last year, the Tygers lost 14-0 to Lexington and 13-0 to Wooster. This year, Lexington won 8-1 and, although it is still a lopsided victory in soccer terms, it wasn't as bad as it normally has been.
And Putt knows his teammates see the improvement every day. While he likely won't win a league championship or a make a trip to the district tournament before his time is through on the pitch, he still hopes to leave the program better than he found it.
"When I was a freshman and sophomore, there was always someone for me to look up to," Putt said. "We started a lot of freshmen last year and are playing a lot of sophomores this year, mixing them with some inexperienced kids who do not have a lot of varsity experience. My job in soccer is to get everyone to love the game. If I can make that happen, I know they will try. They will go home from practice and go in the backyard and practice even more."
And who knows? Maybe the backyard practice of a Tygers youngster can lead him to holding the same dreams Putt had as a toddler.
But instead of the golden dome of a Notre Dame helmet, maybe the influenced youngster will envision an orange and brown Tygers helmet instead. And they will remember how Putt never let anything hold him back from achieving his dream of playing football.
jfurr@gannett.com
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Twitter: @JakeFurr11
This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Putt overcomes chronic idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura to play football
