On Thursday, Stanford junior kickerJoshua Karty was named a semifinalist for the Lou Groza Award, which is presented to the top kicker in the country by the Palm Beach County Sports Commission and Orange Bowl. Karty is 14-14 on his field goals and 21-21 on his extra points this season. His season and career long is 53 yards at Oregon.
In addition to a perfect kicking record, Karty’s kicking has been huge for the Cardinal this year in terms of deciding the outcome of games. In Stanford’s 15-14 homecoming win against Arizona State, Karty went 5-5 on his field goals, scoring all of Stanford’s points. In Stanford’s 16-14 win at Notre Dame, Karty scored 10 of those points, going 3-3 on his field goals while also tacking on an extra point. Karty has not been shy about the kind of confidence he has in himself. He views himself as the best kicker in the nation and when you look at his statistics, it’s hard to argue against it.
“Yeah, no, it feels really cool when people come up to you and say you got ice in your veins and stuff. It’s a lot of fun,” Karty said after the win over Arizona State. “I kind of try to embrace it as much as possible. Yeah, of course I believe I am the best kicker in America. I kind of have to. Even an unbiased view is I still think I am.
“A lot of that is due to my coach, Coach Alamar. He kind of pulled me aside before the season and kind of reinforced why I’m here, who I am, and it kind of has helped me with my mentality a lot. Along with sports psychologists along the way.”
A big focus for Karty coming into the season was converting on his longer kicks. He was great at the shorter kicks last year, but really wanted to make sure he could nail the longer ones as well. So far, his work in the offseason has paid off.
“Overall compared to last year, I mean the numbers pretty much speak for themselves, I’m working most often on converting on my longer kicks,” Karty said at the beginning of the season. “Last year I was perfect from all the shorter kicks, but far from perfect on the longer kicks. So, trying to get dialed in on those. That’s been a lot of the focus the past year.”
If there’s anything that has been at the heart of Karty’s success this year, it’s preparation. He has done a great job at staying ready and knowing that his moment will come. Even when he hasn’t been used much in games, he’s not let that affect his ability to step up when his team does need him. Staying mentally engaged has really been the key.
“We work on a couple of things, I see a sports psychologist here every couple weeks,” Karty said. “I touch base with her. Make sure I’m doing some exercises on the side to keep the mental game strong. Luckily we had access to virtual reality technology where we can download clips from practice. And it’s basically like watching film but in three-dimensional space. And so that’s really good. Allows us to get quick and easy mental reps when we’re lying in bed or sitting on the ground without any stress on the body.
“We’ve had a lot of pressure kicks is what we call them where we pretty much got the whole team surrounding us, almost able to touch us, they’re that close. And they’re all yelling. We, all the kickers and punters have either a pressure kick or pressure punt. And at the end of every summer workout and based on those, either the team runs more less. So, there’s kind of an inherent pressure in those and just a lot of those drills throughout the whole year I think have really toughened us up mentally where we get into the game it feels like we’ve kinda been there before even though we may not necessarily have.”
When he’s not working on his kicking game, Karty spends his time working on his computer science degree. Like all Stanford athletes, he takes his education seriously and enjoys the challenges that come with his major.
“Yeah, so I’m majoring in computer science most likely with a concentration in artificial intelligence,” Karty said. “I still have a couple more years of undergrad left, so not completely decided yet on the path within computer science. But, I kinda stumbled into it. I always knew I was a math and science guy, my mom’s an accountant, my dad’s an organic chemistry professor who actually, he got his PhD here at Stanford in quantum chemistry a while back. So I kinda had the roots for math and science ever since I was a kid. And so when I got here, I kinda just took a bunch of math classes. Some computer science classes and just decided like yeah, I like computer science.
“I think there’s lots of jobs in the future, obviously with computer science and it just felt right for me. I’m also going to try to get a co-term in Management Science & Engineering, which is like a master’s, an undergraduate master’s degree, and venture into the business world in a couple of years. But yeah, I was able to get an internship at SoFi this summer as a data scientist and that was a lot of fun. Really cool stuff and just thankful for the opportunities here at Stanford.”
In terms of whether or not Joshua Karty should win the Lou Groza Award, I think he’s got about as strong of a case as any kicker in the country. He hasn’t missed any kicks and without his clutch kicking, Stanford wouldn’t have their wins over Notre Dame and Arizona State. One thing is for certain, there’s no other kicker in the country who Stanford would rather have.
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