By: Rich Fisher
Katy Paxton has been kicking balls all her life without ever thinking about it. But now that the ball has gone from round to football-shaped, she has come to realize that every time the cleat hits the leather, sciences are at work.
The Princeton High senior, part of an all-Cranbury connection on the football team’s extra point squad, honed her kicking skills at a camp in North Carolina over the summer. As part of her dedication to football, which she took up last year after quitting the Little Tigers girls soccer team, Paxton went to the camp during Princeton’s Junior Prom weekend.
"I gave up the prom to go to camp, but it didn’t bother me," Paxton said. "I didn’t have a date."
While at the camp, Paxton began to learn the intricacies of actually driving a football through a goal post.
"It helped me on how to position the ball and basically, just how to position myself," Paxton said. "My hips were turned too far in, or I wasn’t running a straight line at the ball and it was kind of curving. It taught me how to get my foot on the right part of the ball so it did the right kind of spiral."
Basically, it was a far cry from what she originally thought it entailed.
"I guess when I started, it was just kicking the ball," Paxton said. "When I went there, it was more like ‘This is how you do this, to get it to do that, and the more you do this, the further it goes.’"
The camp also dealt with long snapping and holding, two other key elements of the PAT and field goal. At Princeton, the snapper is Matt Chester and the holder is John Mitko, both Cranbury residents.
"I learned a lot watching that stuff," Paxton said. "Now I can see how to help improve that area of the game. Whether they take my advice or not is up to them, but I just know it makes it easier for me to communicate between the three of us. We seem to be doing OK. We had one mess-up in the Ewing game, but we fixed ourselves since then."
Paxton has also fixed her own form, thanks to some help from the coaches. Rather than waiting until Mitko has the ball before approaching, she moves as soon as Chester snaps it. That allows her to strike the ball quicker and take away the chance of a block. Paxton also got rid of a little hop she had just before approach.
"I think that came out of my stutter step that most soccer players do," she said. "When you kick a soccer ball, you can come from far away and just run at it, but you have to stutter step to make sure your plant foot lands in the right spot. With a football, you don’t have time to be that far away. You have to take two steps back and three over, or however it works for you. I was a little further away then I needed to be, so that hop step was something I did to get myself to the ball."
Since the corrections, Paxton has drilled nine straight extra points and is feeling more comfortable. She is actually looking into a college career, having been accepted to Wingate University in Monroe, N.C. (which she discovered while at camp). She will talk with the coaches there after the season about being a possible short place kicker.
As for being a girl in an all-male sport, Paxton has adjusted but still gets some unwanted attention.
"It’s more comfortable now, but at the beginning of the season, a couple of freshmen gave me a weird look," she said. "I got weird looks at camp too, but I talked to a couple of guys down there."
The most important people she talked to, were the ones that taught her the science of kicking a football.

