JSU football: Karajic helping Gamecocks kick their kicking-game blues

Mar. 4—JACKSONVILLE — That Jacksonville State offering a scholarship to Alen Karajic before he played his first high school football game only seemed like a desperate move.

Sure, the need for a kicker was desperate. Going for it on fourth down became preferable to trying field goals in 2019, and that cost the Gamecocks at least two of their six losses that season.

But Karajic's offer hardly came sight-unseen. JSU just got to see his potential before anyone else did.

"I went to their camp, the JSU football camp," Karajic said. "Right after that, Coach (Owen) Kilgore and I talked, and they said I got offered."

Karajic has put the kick back into JSU's kicking game. Through five games of his freshman season, which started in the fall and resumed this spring, he's 10-for-11 on field goals.

If one heard a collective joyful scream from the 9,355 fans who attended JSU's 27-10 victory over Tennessee Tech on Sunday, it wasn't because a mild day broke JSU's string of rain-soaked home games.

A JSU kicker blasted a kickoff through the end zone for a touchback. Karajic has six touchbacks in 17 attempts.

Touchbacks are back! Oh, the football implications.

"We were talking about that in a staff meeting," JSU head coach John Grass said. "Six touchbacks is really good. If you look at the percentages overall in fall when you start inside the 30 (yard line), the chances of that team scoring as opposed to outside the 30 change dramatically."

All of Tech's 10 points Sunday came on short-field drives, after JSU turnovers.

Wellness at kicker ends what seemed to be the long Gamecock Nation nightmare that was 6-6. Kickers weren't the only reason JSU had its worst season since 2012, without so much as a share of the Ohio Valley Conference title, but kicking woes bring their special brand of agony.

More than anything else about football, it's the thing that should not be. So goes the one-job logic.

JSU had a good kicker for years in Cade Stinnett, but he graduated after the 2018 season. No good answer remained on the team, and Bryant Wallace made four out of just nine field-goal attempts in 2019.

Why just nine attempts?

Because JSU's coaching staff had no confidence that Wallace could make field goals when the line of scrimmage was the opponent's 30-yard line or farther out. They took their chances going for it on fourth down.

And kickoffs? Wallace, punter Jason Pierce and Parker Holland combined for five touchbacks in 58 attempts.

Wallace had the most attempts, by far, with 38, and he averaged 43.8 yards a kick. That means he kicked to the 22-yard line, on average. All it took was a 9-yard return to get beyond the magical 30.

While JSU's kicking game faced struggles in the spring of 2019, Karajic was trying something new at East Hamilton High School in Ooltewah, Tenn. His soccer coach and one of Karajic's friends convinced the striker to try kicking an odd-shaped ball.

A couple of days went by, and he did it. He lined up a 50-yard field goal and kicked it through the goal posts, knuckle-ball style.

"It honestly was ugly," Karajic said. "It wasn't that great. I didn't really have any technique. I just ran up and kicked the ball."

Style points were the bad news. The good news? He had the leg strength to blast a line-drive kick at least 10 feet of the ground at 50 yards, and accurately enough to get it between goal posts.

The rest was all a matter of work, which he did between that first kick of destiny and JSU's camp the following summer.

So marked the start of JSU kicking its kicking-game nightmare and landing a wunderkicker.

"Nobody knew about him," Grass said. "Somehow, we got him to come to our camp, and we kind of found out about him, and he impressed us during the camp.

"The one or two times he came to camp, it was in the pouring rain on the special one. You couldn't get a real judge of any of the kickers or snappers that were there."

JSU's coaching staff kept an eye on Karajic during his senior and only high school football season, which led to his ranking as five-star and the No. 40 kicker in his class by the Kohl's Kicking Camps.

Other schools started to notice. Chattanooga joined the fray to recruit him, but Karajic remembered the school that offered him before he kicked in a high school game.

"That was really, really nice of them," he said.

A walk-on offer eventually became a full ride for a kicker. That's notable, especially for an FCS program like JSU's. The NCAA limits FCS programs to 63 scholarships.

"It's a blessing," Karajic said. "I thank God every single day. It's incredible. It's changed my life and, really, my family's life to know that I can go to college for free."

JSU, 4-1 and ranked No. 10 in the latest STATS FCS poll, has seen a dividend. That part of football noticed most when it fails became boring again ... in the best of ways.

"If he had been kicking for a couple of years, no way we get him," Grass said. "To me, he's a Power 5 kicker for sure. He's got an NFL leg."

Sports Writer Joe Medley: 256-235-3576. On Twitter: @jmedley_star.