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Sydney Palmer hopes to kick for Williamstown High football team

WILLIAMSTOWN – One of the new faces on the Williamstown High School football team during the West Virginia three-week coaching period in June is the first girl to play the gridiron game for the Yellowjackets.

Sydney Palmer, who will be a senior at Williamstown, is vying to kick extra points and possibly field goals this year for head coach Terry Smith’s squad.

“I’ve played soccer since I was younger and I’ve always kind of enjoyed just kicking the ball,” said Palmer. “So I figured if I could put it to good use on the football team, why not try it?”

Palmer, who will again play soccer this fall on the Yellowjacket girls team, admits she’s “never really known much about football. It always kind of amazed me that people could do that type of thing.

“So I just kind of figured I should try it – like my (older) brother Josh was never a football player, but he was really into basketball and I grew up watching him play.

“I figured the worst that I could do was just not be good.”

Palmer’s next step “was talking to people on the (football) team and asking them about it. They were like, ‘You should go and talk to coach Smith about it.’ And in all honesty, a kid on the team had to go up to him and talk to him for me, because I was really nervous about it. But he (Smith) isn’t bad at all.”

To get a head start on preparing for where she is now, “I practiced kicking a little bit last fall, because I didn’t want to show up and just have no idea what I was doing,” said Palmer. “I wanted to get comfortable with kicking a football.”

Which she did so much so that apparently she is in now in contention with two other kickers for playing time this fall. Palmer’s kicking competition are two boys soccer players in senior Jonathan Dietz and sophomore Boston Caruthers.

“It’s been a little bit nerve-racking,” Palmer said, “because the other guys are really good as well.”

At this point, it’s come down to, she said, that “I’m mostly sticking with PATs and some field goals, while the boys are doing kickoffs – and they’re not looking bad.

“And I think for my first time trying something like this, I’m doing pretty good,” including making as much as a 35-yard field goal in practice.

On not coming out for football until she was a senior, Palmer said it was because she “never thought it would be a possibility; I never thought I would be able to succeed enough to be on the team. Making the team was really exciting.”

For the kickers when the season comes around, Palmer explained that “there will be competitions every Tuesday and Wednesday preceding games to see who will be doing what during that week’s game.”

Also, Palmer enlisted some help to get ready for her football tryout this summer.

“My dad will come out with me whenever I want to,” she related, “and he will hold the ball, so I can practice kicking on the field here,” since they live only a couple blocks away.

Plus, her track coach “got ahold of (former Yellowjacket plackicker) Garret Butler for me and he’s been helping me,” Palmer said.

On who of the three contenders might kick to open the season, “I think we’re all on an equal playing field to see who will be out there when that time comes,” said Palmer. And she admitted that “it’d be nice to be out there then.”

Smith has been impressed so far by what he’s seen from Palmer. “She looks like she kicks the ball pretty well,” he noted. “We’re just going to throw her in there with the other two. So they’ll all compete and then we’ll see who’s kicking the best and is the most accurate.

“We’ll give her the opportunity, and I mean it’s up to her after that – I can’t kick it for her. But we’ll try to make it as fair as we can – at least as fair as we know how – and just hope for the best. The best person gets to kick.

Smith said Palmer “has as good a chance” as the other two kicking prospects to at least be booting PATs this fall.

Smith was “surprised when Sydney showed up” as the first girl football player ever for Williamstown. “But she’s a good athlete. Her brother Josh played basketball here; he was a real good player. I’ve known her family for a while and I teach here, so I’ve had her in class.

“But she had asked me about playing football, and I said, ‘Sure, whatever you want to do.’

“We haven’t had a female kicker before, but I don’t see anything different just because of that. My staff and I haven’t seen any problems. But she doesn’t go in the locker room. We see her out on the field. And she is a senior, so she can hold her own.”

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