Middle Tennessee State University Athletics
From kicking under streetlights to under spotlights, Ulbrich sets the standard at punter
10/27/2022 12:23:00 PM | Football
The Graduate Student is fifth in the FBS in punt average entering this weekend
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Under the glow only streetlights headlights with rain drizzling down, Kyle Ulbrich sets another football on the kickoff tee.
It's hours, at this point, after the high school sophomore didn't know how to squib it on the kickoff for Mentor High School's JV game that night against Strongsville. Ulbrich booted it instead, leading to two kickoff return touchdowns. Mentor lost 14-7.
But Ulbrich doesn't care about how long he'll be out there that night. He was not going to let that happen again.
On the other end of the field, his father Bobby, as he always is, is shagging his son's kicks. He's the one that turned his car around, after Kyle told him he needed to work on the squib, retrieving kicks under the street lights on the field Kyle first tried kicking just a few years ago, where Mentor's varsity head coach, Steve Trivisonno, said something to Bobby after watching Kyle kick field goals from the goal line during a youth football banquet.
Kyle still remembers the exact words over a decade later.
"What stuck with me is he said, 'This is the best way to earn a scholarship," Kyle Ulbrich said, referring to kicking and punting. "That sentence stuck with me forever."
Kyle Ulbrich didn't take the easy path to Middle Tennessee, where he's averaging a career-best 45.88 yards per punt in his final year of college ball in 2022. Murfreesboro is already a place where Ulbrich's name is all over the record book, where his career 43.84 yards per punt average is the best ever by a Blue Raider, where his 2021 season is already the top season for an MTSU punter in program history by punt average (44.36 yards per punt).
Even with all those accolades, all that evidence of his hard work paying off, Ulbrich tries not to focus on it. In a season where he's already earned one Ray Guy Punter of the Week honor, he still focuses on what he can do better.
"Whether I do great or whether I do bad, the only thing that matters is how I help the team," Ulbrich said. "It's one thing to say that, it's another thing to do it."
---
A quarterback and wide receiver though his freshman year of high school, Ulbrich picked up kicking and punting as a role on his youth teams just off of instinct alone. Back when league rules were the punter had to take a snap under center, take a five-step drop, and then boot the ball away to the opposing team.
He held that dual role on the freshman team at Mentor High, when the varsity team earned a spot in states that same year. All of the football players, from the varsity guys to the JV A-team to the JV B-team, all the way to Ulbrich on the freshman team, wore their jerseys at school ahead of the game.
Ulbrich was already considering making this specialist role a full-time focus, with him struggling with QB hand signals and his 5.1 40 time limiting his offensive options. What one of his teammates said that day made it all clearer.
"One of the teammates came up to me and said 'Oh, they're giving out jerseys to the punters too,'" Ulbrich recalled. "Obviously, you don't get respect from everybody, especially as a specialist. But that kind of made it click, where if I want to be at the same level of respect, I'm going to have to be exceptional."
Kyle, with his dad Bobby, then went to work. Weight room, practice, countless camps. Switching high schools for his senior year. And while he became known more for his placekicking game than his punting as a prep player, earning first-team all-Lake County, second-team all-conference and second-team all-region honors, one school was willing to give him a shot at both: Valparaiso, a non-scholarship FCS program in the Pioneer League five hours away from Ulbrich's hometown near Lake Erie's shores.
Redshirted as a freshman, Ulbrich got his chance the next year, and did ok, punting 32 times for a 37.0 average with a long punt of 55 yards. He was road blocked at kicker, but the punting had potential. Still, Ulbrich wanted more.
"I had talked to my family, and my dad really wanted me to stay," Ulbrich said. "He said 'You know, you could break all the records here, being that guy as the punter.'
"And I was like 'Yeah, but if I do all of that and don't make it to the NFL, then I'll always wonder what if. But if I go to the FBS, and I come up short and miss my starting spot, then I'll have my answer.'"
It was a painful decision, leaving behind the only school that gave him a shot, Ulbrich said. But he and his dad went to work. Kyle said he sent probably 300 or 400 emails, called football coaches (or more accurately, their secretaries) all over the country, trying to find another program to give him his chance. His dad made a sheet of all 130 FBS programs, their head coaches, their special team's coaches and their phone numbers. All the programs with a junior or senior punter had highlighter over them.
Ulbrich's emails, his calls, were almost always not returned.
All it takes is one though, and Rick Stockstill happened to get Ulbrich's email. He pulled up the video attached and liked his film. Shortly thereafter, a phone call from the head coach to the young punter, and an invitation for Kyle and his family to come out for spring practice.
During that day, Stockstill and Ulbrich watched the Blue Raiders' current punt team work, with Matthew Stephenson leading the unit behind the long snapper.
"Can you beat him out?" Stockstill asked.
Ulbrich, not wanting to seem arrogant, demurred. "Oh, I think I could give him a good fight."
"Then I don't want you then," Stockstill quickly countered.
"Oh, I can beat him out," Ulbrich even more quickly corrected.
It wasn't a scholarship offer, Ulbrich would have to walk-on at MTSU, but it was an FBS roster spot. And all Ulbrich needed was a chance.
"It was a fluke way for him to find me, it was a fluke he even read the email," Ulbrich said. "The timing, just everything worked out."
---
Ulbrich was thrown into the fire right from the start, with his first game as a Blue Raider taking place in "The Big House" in front of over 100,000 fans at the University of Michigan. He estimates his biggest crowd prior to that day was 15,000. He was nervous, but his friend, Gabe Brkic, a kicker at his rival high school in Ohio that played at Oklahoma, gave the green Ulbrich some advice.
"He told me two things," Ulbrich said. "First thing: You have to walk on the field like you're the best, like nothing is going to stop you. Almost like a sort of arrogance. The second part was: no one's watching you. I promise you everyone is in the concessions stand, everyone's on their phone, it's 4th down and you're punting the ball? No one is watching but your parents."
That latter part was key for Ulbrich, as it helped him block out the noise, block out the pressure, and just punt. All through the 2019 season, where he was the distance specialist at punter, through even the 2021 season, Ulbrich doesn't have many memories of his punts on the field, particularly in the biggest stadiums. That mental block goes up for the big moments.
He does remember the little details. How this punt could've been that much closer to the 1-yard line than it was. How that punt maybe could've hung up in the air just a little bit more to give his gunners time to get down field. And even with his average jumping up by almost a full yard every season, those little details still linger.
"Four years ago, I would've given everything I had just to have this average," Ulbrich said. "And now, (I know) it could be better."
Rick Stockstill understands that sentiment, values it, even. But he also understands the importance of what Ulbrich does for his team on the field, like when he had punts of 66, 59 and 52 yards at Hard Rock Stadium this season, helping flip the field for the Blue Raider defense several times in MTSU's 45-31 win.
"He had some field position changing punts," Stockstill said. "Any time you get a long punt, it energizes your defense coming out there, just like a shanked kick deflates the defense. He had a big role and played a big role in that Miami game because of how well and how effectively he punted the ball."
Two of his five punts that afternoon in Miami Gardens were kept inside the 20-yard-line. On the year, 17 of his 40 punts were also kept within that margin. And while the long punts (Ulbrich is the only Blue Raider with at least three 70-yard punts in school history) get the attention, Ulbrich is much more concerned with that field position battle.
After all, he says, that battle is the whole point of his role on the team.
"What we do is only so that the plays on offense and the plays on defense matter," Ulbrich said of him and other specialists. "Because if we don't do our job, everything that they did in between mean nothing. We have to do everything to our best ability to get the best result so that their reps mattered. I just don't want to do anything to impair their success."
---
In his fifth year of playing college football, Ulbrich now doesn't have to block off as much in his mind. That adrenaline boost from the crowd or from his teammates is an advantage, not a hindrance, with his experience.
But there is one memory that's stuck with him from when he had to block things out. Walking off the field from early warmups, back into the visitor's locker room in Ann Arbor, and seeing a white uniform, fitted over his shoulder pads.
With his last name, his father's last name, "ULBRICH" across the back.
"He's been everything," Kyle said. "Everything I have is in his name."
It was one small way to repay his father, who spent so many nights shagging balls for his son on the road up. Kyle hopes he can pay back everything, all the camp fees, the college application fees, all the student loans before he was put on scholarship, with his right leg one day.
With his accolades, his rise to the top of not only the MTSU record books, but of the national rankings, where he sits fifth in punt average in the FBS entering this weekend's trip to UTEP, there's a good chance he'll get a shot.
"My family never had anything really extravagant or anything like that, so our name has always been kind buried," Ulbrich said. "Just seeing (our name), where I could put my last name out in lights, on TV, on a stage like that, it just meant everything."
It's hours, at this point, after the high school sophomore didn't know how to squib it on the kickoff for Mentor High School's JV game that night against Strongsville. Ulbrich booted it instead, leading to two kickoff return touchdowns. Mentor lost 14-7.
But Ulbrich doesn't care about how long he'll be out there that night. He was not going to let that happen again.
On the other end of the field, his father Bobby, as he always is, is shagging his son's kicks. He's the one that turned his car around, after Kyle told him he needed to work on the squib, retrieving kicks under the street lights on the field Kyle first tried kicking just a few years ago, where Mentor's varsity head coach, Steve Trivisonno, said something to Bobby after watching Kyle kick field goals from the goal line during a youth football banquet.
Kyle still remembers the exact words over a decade later.
"What stuck with me is he said, 'This is the best way to earn a scholarship," Kyle Ulbrich said, referring to kicking and punting. "That sentence stuck with me forever."
Kyle Ulbrich didn't take the easy path to Middle Tennessee, where he's averaging a career-best 45.88 yards per punt in his final year of college ball in 2022. Murfreesboro is already a place where Ulbrich's name is all over the record book, where his career 43.84 yards per punt average is the best ever by a Blue Raider, where his 2021 season is already the top season for an MTSU punter in program history by punt average (44.36 yards per punt).
Even with all those accolades, all that evidence of his hard work paying off, Ulbrich tries not to focus on it. In a season where he's already earned one Ray Guy Punter of the Week honor, he still focuses on what he can do better.
"Whether I do great or whether I do bad, the only thing that matters is how I help the team," Ulbrich said. "It's one thing to say that, it's another thing to do it."
---
A quarterback and wide receiver though his freshman year of high school, Ulbrich picked up kicking and punting as a role on his youth teams just off of instinct alone. Back when league rules were the punter had to take a snap under center, take a five-step drop, and then boot the ball away to the opposing team.
He held that dual role on the freshman team at Mentor High, when the varsity team earned a spot in states that same year. All of the football players, from the varsity guys to the JV A-team to the JV B-team, all the way to Ulbrich on the freshman team, wore their jerseys at school ahead of the game.
Ulbrich was already considering making this specialist role a full-time focus, with him struggling with QB hand signals and his 5.1 40 time limiting his offensive options. What one of his teammates said that day made it all clearer.
"One of the teammates came up to me and said 'Oh, they're giving out jerseys to the punters too,'" Ulbrich recalled. "Obviously, you don't get respect from everybody, especially as a specialist. But that kind of made it click, where if I want to be at the same level of respect, I'm going to have to be exceptional."
Kyle, with his dad Bobby, then went to work. Weight room, practice, countless camps. Switching high schools for his senior year. And while he became known more for his placekicking game than his punting as a prep player, earning first-team all-Lake County, second-team all-conference and second-team all-region honors, one school was willing to give him a shot at both: Valparaiso, a non-scholarship FCS program in the Pioneer League five hours away from Ulbrich's hometown near Lake Erie's shores.
Redshirted as a freshman, Ulbrich got his chance the next year, and did ok, punting 32 times for a 37.0 average with a long punt of 55 yards. He was road blocked at kicker, but the punting had potential. Still, Ulbrich wanted more.
"I had talked to my family, and my dad really wanted me to stay," Ulbrich said. "He said 'You know, you could break all the records here, being that guy as the punter.'
"And I was like 'Yeah, but if I do all of that and don't make it to the NFL, then I'll always wonder what if. But if I go to the FBS, and I come up short and miss my starting spot, then I'll have my answer.'"
It was a painful decision, leaving behind the only school that gave him a shot, Ulbrich said. But he and his dad went to work. Kyle said he sent probably 300 or 400 emails, called football coaches (or more accurately, their secretaries) all over the country, trying to find another program to give him his chance. His dad made a sheet of all 130 FBS programs, their head coaches, their special team's coaches and their phone numbers. All the programs with a junior or senior punter had highlighter over them.
Ulbrich's emails, his calls, were almost always not returned.
All it takes is one though, and Rick Stockstill happened to get Ulbrich's email. He pulled up the video attached and liked his film. Shortly thereafter, a phone call from the head coach to the young punter, and an invitation for Kyle and his family to come out for spring practice.
During that day, Stockstill and Ulbrich watched the Blue Raiders' current punt team work, with Matthew Stephenson leading the unit behind the long snapper.
"Can you beat him out?" Stockstill asked.
Ulbrich, not wanting to seem arrogant, demurred. "Oh, I think I could give him a good fight."
"Then I don't want you then," Stockstill quickly countered.
"Oh, I can beat him out," Ulbrich even more quickly corrected.
It wasn't a scholarship offer, Ulbrich would have to walk-on at MTSU, but it was an FBS roster spot. And all Ulbrich needed was a chance.
"It was a fluke way for him to find me, it was a fluke he even read the email," Ulbrich said. "The timing, just everything worked out."
---
Ulbrich was thrown into the fire right from the start, with his first game as a Blue Raider taking place in "The Big House" in front of over 100,000 fans at the University of Michigan. He estimates his biggest crowd prior to that day was 15,000. He was nervous, but his friend, Gabe Brkic, a kicker at his rival high school in Ohio that played at Oklahoma, gave the green Ulbrich some advice.
"He told me two things," Ulbrich said. "First thing: You have to walk on the field like you're the best, like nothing is going to stop you. Almost like a sort of arrogance. The second part was: no one's watching you. I promise you everyone is in the concessions stand, everyone's on their phone, it's 4th down and you're punting the ball? No one is watching but your parents."
That latter part was key for Ulbrich, as it helped him block out the noise, block out the pressure, and just punt. All through the 2019 season, where he was the distance specialist at punter, through even the 2021 season, Ulbrich doesn't have many memories of his punts on the field, particularly in the biggest stadiums. That mental block goes up for the big moments.
He does remember the little details. How this punt could've been that much closer to the 1-yard line than it was. How that punt maybe could've hung up in the air just a little bit more to give his gunners time to get down field. And even with his average jumping up by almost a full yard every season, those little details still linger.
"Four years ago, I would've given everything I had just to have this average," Ulbrich said. "And now, (I know) it could be better."
Rick Stockstill understands that sentiment, values it, even. But he also understands the importance of what Ulbrich does for his team on the field, like when he had punts of 66, 59 and 52 yards at Hard Rock Stadium this season, helping flip the field for the Blue Raider defense several times in MTSU's 45-31 win.
"He had some field position changing punts," Stockstill said. "Any time you get a long punt, it energizes your defense coming out there, just like a shanked kick deflates the defense. He had a big role and played a big role in that Miami game because of how well and how effectively he punted the ball."
Two of his five punts that afternoon in Miami Gardens were kept inside the 20-yard-line. On the year, 17 of his 40 punts were also kept within that margin. And while the long punts (Ulbrich is the only Blue Raider with at least three 70-yard punts in school history) get the attention, Ulbrich is much more concerned with that field position battle.
After all, he says, that battle is the whole point of his role on the team.
"What we do is only so that the plays on offense and the plays on defense matter," Ulbrich said of him and other specialists. "Because if we don't do our job, everything that they did in between mean nothing. We have to do everything to our best ability to get the best result so that their reps mattered. I just don't want to do anything to impair their success."
---
In his fifth year of playing college football, Ulbrich now doesn't have to block off as much in his mind. That adrenaline boost from the crowd or from his teammates is an advantage, not a hindrance, with his experience.
But there is one memory that's stuck with him from when he had to block things out. Walking off the field from early warmups, back into the visitor's locker room in Ann Arbor, and seeing a white uniform, fitted over his shoulder pads.
With his last name, his father's last name, "ULBRICH" across the back.
"He's been everything," Kyle said. "Everything I have is in his name."
It was one small way to repay his father, who spent so many nights shagging balls for his son on the road up. Kyle hopes he can pay back everything, all the camp fees, the college application fees, all the student loans before he was put on scholarship, with his right leg one day.
With his accolades, his rise to the top of not only the MTSU record books, but of the national rankings, where he sits fifth in punt average in the FBS entering this weekend's trip to UTEP, there's a good chance he'll get a shot.
"My family never had anything really extravagant or anything like that, so our name has always been kind buried," Ulbrich said. "Just seeing (our name), where I could put my last name out in lights, on TV, on a stage like that, it just meant everything."
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