Freshman Morocco Gets His Kicks

At 5’9 and 200 pounds, and sporting a scruffy beard to go with his blond hair, freshman Jim Morocco looks like a football player. Typical lineman or fullback, most people think upon seeing Morocco in person. What Morocco does not look like, however, is a kicker—but that is exactly the position the freshman is now occupying for the Crimson.

Morocco never played soccer, and he is certainly not the graceful type that could not take a hit. After starting on the offensive line for three years at perennial conference champion Sharon High School in western Pennsylvania, Morocco considers himself a football player, not just a kicker.

“I think that it’s a big difference having played football in high school, you definitely know how much more every kick means to all the players when you’ve played another position,” Morocco says.

Coming out of high school, though, college scouts recruited Morocco to kick, as he had made 17 out of 23 field goals in four years as the kicker at Sharon with a long field goalof 43 yards. Morocco chose Harvard with the understanding that he would focus on kickoffs early on, because senior Anders Blewett and junior Robbie Wright were the two kickers that had done all the place-kicking the past two seasons.

When junior punter Adam Kingston established himself as the kickoff specialist for the Crimson in 2002, Morocco went back to focusing his practice time more on placekicking with the understanding that he would have a year to get adjusted to kicking in college.

“Back in August, we felt that Morocco was the kicker of the future and we could develop him for a year, because Blewett and Wright would give us a solid rotation at kicker,” Harvard coach Tim Murphy says. “Obviously, things change, and things have changed a lot since the start of the season.”

To begin with, Wright notified the coaching staff at the end of the summer that he would not be returning to the football team after two sub-par years splitting time with Blewett as the placekicker. Wright made only 4 of 11 field goal tries in 2000 and 2001. Montana native Blewett was then given the kicking job outright despite having a 30 percent success rate on field goals in the last two years (3 for 10). After Blewett failed to substantially improve his average in five games this season, going 1 for 3, Murphy decided enough was enough.

The Crimson’s heartbreaking loss against Northeastern two weeks ago may have been the nail in the coffin. Blewett’s failure to make a crucial 34-yard field goal as time ran out in the first half marked Blewett’s final attempt before the switch.

“It wasn’t the kick against Northeastern specifically, it was more of a long range thing,” Murphy explains. “The kicking game obviously has not been a strength of ours for a couple of years, and we just felt like we had nothing to lose with making this change.”

Morocco’s first game as placekicker was this past Saturday against Princeton, and he quickly validated the coaching staff’s faith in him. In a remarkably similar situation to the one Blewett had faced against Northeastern the week before, Morocco was brought on for his first field goal try—from 29 yards out—in a Harvard uniform with three seconds remaining in the first half. Unlike Blewett the week before, Morocco nailed it, and Harvard went on to win the game 24-17.

“Jim hitting his first field goal attempt was huge, and I think it gave the team more confidence in him,” says captain and quarterback Neil Rose. “He wasn’t hitting all of them in practice, so it was great to see him hit it when it counted.”

While some people might feel a lot of pressure coming in to a team that is dominated by juniors and seniors—and occupying a role as prominent as placekicker—Morocco downplays it.

“Kicking is a lot of pressure in general, but as far as being a freshman it is really no different for me, because I did it for four years in high school,” Morocco says.

Morocco certainly faced a lot of pressure and responded admirably in high school in his kicking duties. Sharon High won four straight Mercer County Athletic Conference Championships as well as four straight District 10 titles during Morocco’s tenure as kicker and punter. Sharon also twice advanced to the Pennsylvania state semifinals and was 43-11 overall from 1998-2001.

Morocco accumulated 200 total points and was the all-conference kicker in Mercer County for each year in his high school career. With these accolades behind him, Morocco’s teammates say that confidence in his ability to play at this level is not a problem for him.

“Jim has a quiet cool that is admirable in a kicker,” junior punter Adam Kingston says. “Being a good kicker is all about having the confidence to step in there and split the uprights every time.”

Perhaps Morocco’s confidence stems to some degree from his humble beginnings as a kicker. At the tender age of eight, shopping in Wal-Mart with his mother, Morocco saw a plain red kicking tee and simply had to have it. It came with a little manual that showed him the steps to take to kick properly. Morocco read it intently and started practicing.

“I didn’t have anything to do when I was a little kid, so I would just spend a couple of hours a day kicking a ball back and forth out in the street,” Morocco says. “I don’t know, I think my parents thought I was kind of crazy at the time.”

Morocco swears that he has hardly changed his style a bit since reading that manual ten years ago. He has started off on the right foot with the Crimson, and his teammates don’t seem to care that he is a freshman.

“I don’t think it’s hard at all for us to rely on a freshman,” Kingston says. “He has proven capable of getting the job done and when it comes to kicking... that’s all that matters.”