Shane Beamer explains challenges of recruiting kickers, punters

One key position in the 2024 recruiting class for South Carolina was kicker, and Shane Beamer joined On3’s Andy Staples to explain the difficult and delicate process of selecting the right kicker recruit.

Kickers are a tough position to recruit as they’re wildly unpredictable as it is and even tougher to predict down the road. Beamer explained to Staples that even if you land a stud prospect of a kicker, there’s a pretty good shot the walk-on high school soccer player will happen to be the better place kicker.

“It’s hard. It really is, I’ll be honest. But a lot of the places that I’ve been where we signed a kicker or punter. They don’t always pan out. I’ve been a couple places where you give a scholarship to someone out of high school and he ends up getting beat out by the guy you brought in as a walk-on. It’s hard to project”

Staples then brought up the Gamecocks kicker in the 2024 class, Mason Love, who is one of the top kickers in the cycle. Per Shane Beamer, the Carolina staff did everything they could to make sure they felt good about him.

“We’ve had a lot of eyes on Mason. Myself, Pete Lembo, Tyler Zelinski, our analyst, and we all feel really good about him,” said Beamer, detailing the scouting process for Love.

“That is a tough one to evaluate in a lot of ways. You try to get him on your campus in camp, or maybe you’re going to watch them kick in person, but we were very thorough on it. Pete, our special teams coach, he went and watched a lot of guys kick live and in person, multiple times also, and then tried to get them on our campus.”

Lastly, Beamer added that there’s so much invested into the kicker recruitment because of how important they are and how few of them ultimately land roster spots.

“Because it’s kinda like a quarterback. You’re only going to offer one and you better get it right. Because if you don’t, it can certainly set you back.”

The Gamecocks seem to have executed well on this process last time, though. South Carolina just lost a reliable kicker in Mitch Jeter. He converted 33/34 extra point tries this season as well as 12 of 14 field goals a year after he went a perfect 11/11. Shane Beamer hopes that Mason Love can step in and provide similar consistency.