Bettendorf gets strong kicks from soccer program

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By Jon Gremmels | Thursday, November 15, 2007 2:36 AM CST | () comments

Year in and year out, one of the trademarks of Bettendorf’s football team is a strong kicking game.

It was as important as ever last Friday when the Bulldogs beat Cedar Falls 6-3 in the Iowa Class 4A state semifinals. They not only won on Billy Rembold’s 27-yard field goal in overtime, but Nate Meyer also hit a pair of booming punts in the fourth quarter that prevented Cedar Falls from getting excellent field position.

The kicking game might be just as important this week, when the top-ranked Bulldogs face No. 4 Ankeny (11-1) in the Class 4A state championship game at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls.

“We’re definitely going to work on specialties real hard,” Rembold said. “They’re a big part of our game.”

That’s no accident, either.

“That’s the soccer program,” Bettendorf football coach Randy Scott said. “You say what you want about soccer but I’ll tell you what, over the years, all of our kickers have come from the soccer program.”

Rembold and Meyer both have backgrounds in soccer, as does another teammate, Andrew Martin, and all say soccer makes them better football players.

“That’s where I learned how to punt the ball, playing soccer,” said Meyer, a junior who also is a goalkeeper in soccer.

“They go hand-in-hand,” said Rembold, who was 0-for-3 on field goals this season before connecting on two attempts Friday. “Soccer definitely helps with kicking.”

So, it seems, the football team owes some of its success to soccer coach Ben Pennington. Of course, one of the key players on last year’s soccer team, which was ranked No. 1 in the state, was Colin Sandeman, a freshman on the University of Iowa football team. Another former Hawkeye star, Tavian Banks, excelled in both sports, too.

“It definitely helps in soccer having football; it helps you run faster and make moves,” Martin said.

The kicking positions have benefited the most. The long line of success goes back at least as far as Alex Sierk, a 1995 Bettendorf graduate who played both sports for the Bulldogs and returned to the team this fall as an assistant coach working with, of course, kickers.

“I think Bettendorf is a unique school in that both programs are premier programs in the state,” said Sierk, an orthodontist in Bettendorf. “Working with the special teams at Bettendorf is about as easy as there is. These are special kickers we have right now.”

Meyer has averaged 44.3 yards on 33 punts this season. Rembold has made 51 of 56 extra-point tries along with the two field goals.

They are quick to credit Sierk with making them better, though.

“Part of it is we’ve got a new special teams’ coach — Alex Sierk,” said Meyer, who probably will succeed Rembold as kicker next year, too. “He has really helped get technique down. It’s the little things, not just kicking as hard as you can. I feel a lot more confident punting this year. It seems a lot more natural. I’m getting reps. It’s getting it down to muscle memory. The same goes for kicking, too.”

Rembold, who splits time between receiver and kicker, said he felt more comfortable, too.

But Sierk said there wasn’t a lot of work to be done.

“I’m working with kids who have kicked a lot,” he said. “My goal with them is can you do it over and over? We changed some little things here and there. Tweaking.”

But whether the credit goes to the specialty coach, the soccer coach or the kickers themselves, it’s all working out well for the football team. If all goes well Friday, the football team will accomplish something the soccer team was unable to do in the fall: win a state title.

“This is what we’ve been working for the past four years,” Meyer said, “not just to get here, but to do our best to win.”

Jon Gremmels can be contacted at (563) 383-2294 or at jgremmels@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.