Kicking his way to college

Terrebonne High School kicker and punter Ryan Domangue generates some steam, takes a few steps forward and slams his powerful right foot into the football.

“I didn’t get it all,” he barks at himself as the football glides through the warm, but sticky air on this damp morning. “Nope, not this one. Let me kick another one.”

Domangue stands in the back of his own end zone with each punt. After every two kicks, he walks to retrieve his footballs, neatly markered with his initials “RD”.

One yard, then 5 yards, then 10 yards, then 20.

Before you know it, Domangue arrives at the football he scoffed at, all the way across the field.

The punt he labeled as a failure sailed approximately 60 yards on the fly and traveled approximately 85 yards after it finished bouncing.

“From the back of my end zone to the other end zone,” Domangue quips with a wry smile. “In a game, that’d be a hell of a punt.”

So much for it being a bad kick. That’s the way life goes when you’re one of the most highly-touted kickers in America, a title Domangue has earned throughout his career because of the massive power in his right leg, which has begun to catch the attention of several colleges across America.

“I was a sophomore thinking, ‘Hopefully I can make something out of this kicking stuff,'” Domangue recalls. “I never thought I’d have these colleges looking at me and everything. From there, I made it my job – this is what I want to do and this is my last summer to work hard and to go get it.”

This summer has been a busy one for Domangue.

“Heck no,” he quips when asked if he’s able to sleep late over the break. “Never. I’ve been non-stop, waking up at 7:30 a.m.”

That’s because Domangue is working hard to better himself at kicking camps across the country, using help he’s received from countless sponsors, including Derrick Prentice Law Firm, Kyle Domangue, J-Don’s Seafood, Bon Terre Credit, NW Trucking and Disposal and Cindy and Shannon Trahan.

“Without their help, it would have been very hard to go to all of these camps,” Domangue said. “I’m very grateful for the people willing to help me, (which) allows me to go out and show what I’ve got.”

What Domangue’s “got” is a powerful right leg, which he opened his summer displaying at a kicking showcase in Atlanta where he bombed kickoffs of 76 and 82 yards.

“They had a 4.2 hang time, too,” Domangue boasts, proud of his work.

From Atlanta, the kicker has also attended showcases and camps at Tulane, LSU and the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, while also kicking at the Chris Boniol Camp in Dallas.

It was at ULL where Domangue picked up his first collegiate scholarship offer, from the Ragin’ Cajuns and first-year coach Mark Hudspeth.

He picked up that offer after winning the kickoff competition at that camp.

“Coach was cracking some jokes and asked me how I liked his rims, because I kid you not, his golf cart has 22-inch rims,” Domangue said with a laugh. “But then he got to business and asked me ‘Hey, man, do you have anybody looking at you yet? Do you have any offers?’ I told him I did have some schools interested, but I didn’t have any offers. So he said back, ‘Well, you just got your first one because we’re going to offer you a scholarship.’

“When he said that to me, I couldn’t do anything else except start smiling. … I called my dad and he was excited. I called my aunt and she was excited. It was just an overall awesome time.”

While the ULL camp provided Domangue with his most memorable moment so far this summer, he said the camp that gave him the best sense of where he stands was the Boniol Camp.

Where other camps pit kickers against one another in competitions, Domangue said this camp was more about polishing technique and refining one’s skills.

To do so, Boniol calls in the best of the best in kicking like Domangue’s uncle and former NFL kicker Richie Cunningham, former Cowboys and Saints punter Toby Gowin and retired NFL veteran Tim Seder.

“That whole camp was about working on your form and the technique and fundamentals of how you kick,” Domangue said. “They liked the way I kicked. They helped me a lot with my field goals. They helped me to become more explosive up and through the ball to get more height on it. And my kickoffs, they told me they were impressed, too.”

The Boniol Camp gave Domangue something else, a routine used by professionals.

That routine, the kicker said is the focus of all of his summer workouts, which gives him the proverbial leg up on the competition.

“Chris Boniol is the kicking coach for the Dallas Cowboys, so the workouts I’m doing are the same ones they are doing in the NFL,” Domangue said. “It’s the same workout that the professional players use, so it’s very helpful.”

With summer reaching its midpoint, Domangue is putting that routine to task every day on the Terrebonne High football field as he prepares for his next challenge, one with arguably the highest stakes.

Later this summer, Domangue will travel to the prestigious National Invitational Scholarship Camp in Whitewater, Wis.

The camp’s website touts it’s “America’s Biggest Event” for a kicker.

For Domangue, it just may be, as the top 350 kickers in America will attend and the top two will receive an invitation to play in the Under Armour All-America Game.

Top two or not, Domangue will be showcased at the camp to several more colleges, as the camp is the No. 1 evaluator ESPN and Kohl’s uses to rate their kickers, a list universities use when deciding which kickers to offer scholarships to.

“That’s the big, big one,” Domangue says, leaning back in his chair, embracing the high-stakes nature of the camp. “I know I’ve got to be mentally tough. From my training and training myself, I know I need to not worry about my surroundings and just tell yourself, ‘Go out there and do your job.’ That’s what I need to do, do my job. If I do that, I’ll be fine.”

When summer ends, Domangue will return to Terrebonne High to embark on his senior season, where he hopes to help his team have another successful season and to keep his “envelope fat”.

The kicker has a single envelope he holds all of his letters from various schools.

As is, it looks chubby, to put it lightly.

Once schools see the kicker’s improvements, the envelope just might explode.

“I have my first offer, but I’m going to wait it out and be patient and let the recruiting process run its course,” Domangue said. “By the time this is done, I hope to have plenty of options to pick from. That would be awesome and a major blessing to me.

“But for now, I’m just happy that colleges are interested. That’s so awesome to me.”

Kicking his way to college