Look at any soccer roster in the world and what do you see? The names of people who kick balls.
Their numbers are legion, coast to coast and border to border — people who love to kick.
So when the Keystone football staff was searching for a place-kicker a couple seasons ago, where did they look? You got it. The Wildcats soccer roster.
They spotted the name of sweeper Tim Beverage, recruited him and he joined the football team on game nights. He became Keystone’s No. 1 kicker.
This year, the 2-2 Wildcat football team has not one, but two soccer players at its disposal. One is senior Tim Geisel, an offensive midfielder on the soccer team, and the other is junior Scott Beverage, soccer goalkeeper and Tim’s younger brother.
Successful? You bet. The pair hasn’t missed a field goal or point after touchdown all season. Geisel has kicked three field goals and Beverage two; Beverage has seven straight extra points, Geisel has three.
Tonight, when the Wildcats travel to 3-1 Oberlin, Geisel will go it alone. Beverage will miss a game for the second straight Friday after suffering a meniscus injury in a soccer game last week. He hopes to return to the football team next Friday night.
Geisel and Beverage can spend time with both teams because their coaches cooperate.
“We’re a small school and a pay-to-play school so it’s important for the coaches to cooperate,” said football coach Rob Clarico. “We tell them soccer comes first, but (soccer coach Mike Cracas) lets us have them for 45 minutes for the Thursday walk-through and of course on Friday nights.”
Geisel, who’s also the punter, handles kickoffs, longer field goals and the occasional extra point. Beverage kicks PATs and shorter field goals. Geisel’s field goals have come from 32, 35 and 37 yards; Beverage’s from 32 and 33 yards.
For Beverage, the soccer-football connection was basically a family tradition.
“I’ve been doing this for three years,” he said. “My brother did the kicking for the varsity and I was kicking for the JVs.
“They always used to call me ‘Soccer’ in seventh and eighth grade, so they naturally thought I could kick. The only reason I didn’t play soccer then was they didn’t have a team for me because I was a little older. I started kicking then, my brother started kicking in high school and I just kept following and did the same thing.”
It was different for Geisel, who was The Chronicle’s first soccer player of the week this season.
“A bunch of the football players told me I should come out and play football,” said Geisel, “but I wasn’t able to figure out how I could do the practices for football and soccer. So they told me to come out and kick. I started kicking and enjoyed it. I was doing pretty well, so I stuck with it.”
Both practice a lot.
“With the team, I practice only (on Thursdays),” Geisel said. “But I work on kicking with my dad a lot. We’ll come out on Sunday afternoon after church and I’ll kick some field goals and punt for a while.”
“Some days after soccer we’ll go and practice together for an hour or two hours,” Beverage said. “One of us holds while the other one kicks and we just keep taking turns. Over the summer, I practiced at least every other day, if not every day. I knew I needed to get in shape and start kicking. It paid off, I think.”
So how tough is the transition from kicking a round ball in a soccer match to kicking an oblong football?
“A lot of it is timing,” Geisel said. “Basically kicking the balls is the same, it’s finding the right spot to hit the ball. In football, you have to time it up with the snapper and the holder. That’s still not perfect with us, but we’re doing pretty well with it.”
“I would agree with that, especially on kickoffs,” Beverage said. “You have to have a perfect sprint (to the ball).”
Contact Bob Daniels at 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.  

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