Fresh Kicks

This story originally ran in the 12.3 Issue of GoDuke, the Magazine -- Oct. 2020

Charlie Ham, Porter Wilson and Duke football first intersected sometime in the summer of 2018.

Kirk Benedict thinks June 15 and he should know. Benedict coaches Duke's special teams and he was looking for a kicker or two. Duke was hosting a one-day camp and had invited two specialists, placekicker Ham and punter Wilson.

It was love at first sight, at least from Duke's perspective.

"When we had both of them in camp, if I could have done a back flip I would have done on both cases a back flip," David Cutcliffe recalls. "Being that excited about their ability."

Benedict agrees. "We got to see both of them and we fell in love with both of them on the spot. We decided to go ahead and try and get both of them on our team."

Ham is 6-foot-1, 180 pounds, from Atlanta. Wilson is 6-5, 200, from Fairlawn, Ohio, a suburb of Akron.

So, they aren't clones. But they share a lot of similarities. Both were outstanding prep soccer players; Ham led The Westminster School to three state championships. Both still love soccer but decided on football for practical reasons. "My dream was to play soccer at the next level," Wilson says, "but more scholarships are available for football." Other sports were involved, baseball for Ham, basketball and track & field for Wilson. Both had families willing and able to devote the resources necessary to send their sons to the camps where kickers show off their talents.

And both have powerful right legs. Wilson says when he's right, "I'm capable of reaching the stars."

Of course, they had other suitors.

"I was just amazed looking around," Ham says of that first trip to Duke. "It felt like I was at home; I wanted a place that felt like home."

Wilson is on the same page.

"I must have had a hundred different schools reach out to me. It was super overwhelming. They all sounded exactly the same until Duke. This isn't like any other program. They aren't going to show you something that isn't real, they aren't going to put on a show. 'We're here, we're going to help you be the best you can be.'"

"We had to put in some work to recruit them," Benedict acknowledges. "They knew it was a great place to play…and they really liked the people, the kids on the team and the people in the program. They placed a high value on academics and education."

They arrived at Duke with different expectations. Austin Parker was Duke's incumbent punter going into the 2019 season and he maintained that status. But Benedict says Wilson pushed Parker in practice every single day. Parker averaged a career-best 45.7 yards per punt, the second-best mark in school history.

"We had two guys that were really talented. We knew Porter was the future, based on his talent. Austin always needed competition. That made Austin lock in more."

Wilson says sitting out 2019 "gave me time to adjust" to college ball, while he picked Parker's brain for everything the veteran knew about college kicking.

Grad student Colin Wareham was Duke's placekicker during Ham's senior year at Westminster and Ham thought he had clear sailing to the kicker's role as a true freshman. "I was told there weren't many kickers there," he recalls.

AJ Reed had struggled as a true freshman in 2016 and had not kicked at all the next two seasons. But he had a bounce-back 2019 spring, regained his starting role and had an outstanding 2019 season.

Ham says it was "the best thing that could have happened to me. I had just won a state title in soccer and a few months later I was here. I wasn't ready."

Benedict again credits the freshman for pushing the senior into his best season.

Ham did get in at the end of the season, no placekicks but a few kickoffs, enough to get his feet wet without jeopardizing his redshirt.

"Get that first shot out of the way," Benedict says, "just to have the feeling of a couple of kickoffs, to have a couple of game reps allowed him to hone his focus in the offseason."

"It definitely helped," Ham notes. "I was super-nervous. After that I got into the groove."

Wilson did not see the field in 2019.

Parker graduated with no eligibility remaining, while Reed elected to graduate and use his final year of eligibility as a grad student transfer at Arkansas.

But both Wilson and Ham had to earn their starting spots for 2020, Wilson competing against Jackson Hubbard and Ham against Jack Driggers. In fact, Benedict says Driggers has the strongest leg on the team and Duke uses him on kickoffs.

But earn them they did. It might seem unusual to have freshmen — even redshirt freshmen — as your primary kickers but Cutcliffe has done it before. True freshman kicker Ross Martin and redshirt freshman Will Monday started at Duke in 2012 and maintained that status for four years. Both are among the best ever at Duke and were integral components of Duke's 2013 Coastal Division champions.

Parker was a redshirt freshman and Reed a true freshman when they replaced Monday and Martin in 2016. Both struggled, Parker with injuries and a brief dismissal from the program, Reed with general ineffectiveness. But both rebounded for outstanding senior seasons.

Benedict says Ham and Wilson have the raw talent to equal the careers of Martin and Monday "if they continue to work hard."

He says Ham's soccer background has made him "incredibly accurate," while he says Wilson has "talent, general athleticism, flexibility, leg speed, overall size, the things he was born with and he uses those well."

But kicking can be a very lonely existence. There's nowhere to hide from a mistake and Benedict says the intangibles are what separate the great kickers from the not-so-great kickers.

"Ultimately what makes a great specialist is what's up here in your head. Porter has done a great job…He's able to keep a level head no matter what the situation is. That combined with his skillset and his will to prepare every single week is what has made him great so far."

Ham gets the same praise.

"Both him and Porter, they're unique. They're dudes. Sometimes specialists have this way to get in their own minds and over-think things. They're both athletes with short memories, focused minds. Those guys have great mental attitudes, great mental focus."

And there have been wobbles. Ham missed a PAT and short field goal against Boston College in his second game.

"I put it in the rear-view mirror but let it motivate me to focus. I had that high from the first week and kind of lost focus for a bit."

Three weeks later he was named ACC specialist of the week after kicking three field goals against Syracuse.

Wilson says he has very high standards for himself and "everybody can always get better on consistency."

Both gratefully acknowledge that they rely on 10 other guys. Ham calls snapper John Taylor and holder Hubbard "the best snapper and holder in the country." Wilson says of his punt team that he prioritizes "making sure they know how important the job is. When they make big plays, the team is celebrating. The whole team is invested."

Ham and Porter have become close. "We're going to be going through this thing for four or five years," Ham says, "and I'm definitely excited to have big 98 by my side."

Cutcliffe says he's counting on it.

"They're very, very talented. So, I would say this, and I really believe this, that the best is yet to come for those two."

Players Mentioned

Jack Driggers

Charlie Ham

Jackson Hubbard

Austin Parker

AJ Reed

John Taylor

Porter Wilson

Duke information