It won’t be easy for Kyle Loomis to replace punter Sam Paulescu

By Cliff Kirkpatrick
Corvallis Gazette-Times

Bruce Read scoured video for more than a year searching for a punter. It turned out who he was looking for was down Interstate 5 a few hours by car.

The Oregon State special teams coordinator found what he was looking for in Kyle Loomis, an all-state athlete from Roseburg High.

Read and coach Mike Riley believe Loomis was the best punter on the West Coast at the prep level last season. Rivals.com rated him the 20th best in the country.

“He’s further along than many young punters I see,” Read said. “And getting to see him up close he’s flexible, smart, has good feet, hands and he’s an athlete. Everything about him points to him to being a really good punter. He’s a prototype of what you look for.”

However, it’s not going to be that easy.

Loomis takes the place of Sam Paulescu, a two-year starter who came out of a junior college with a powerful leg.

Paulescu left big shoes to fill because he averaged 42.7 yards a punt during two seasons, earning first-team All-Pacific-10 Conference last year and honorable mention his junior season.

“We’ll miss Sam because he was so consistent,” Read said. “There’s no way around that. You knew where the ball was going to be. You could count on him handling any bad snaps. We are going into a new era with that, and with that comes lessons.”

Loomis says he’s ready for the challenge. He expects to be nervous his first punt, but should settle down afterward. Read hopes to have him prepared for most situations in the next month, but knows there’s going to be a growing period — maybe a full season.

After only four practices, Loomis already sees how fast the rush is going to be. And that’s with his teammates going less than full speed.

“I’m just excited to do something, and ready to start (playing games),” Loomis said. “It’s a lot faster than high school, but that’s OK.”

Getting the ball off quicker is his first priority, but there are about four other technical areas to work on, basically being consistent at each stage of the punt.

“There are a lot of little things we have to work on with him,” Read said. “It might be a year or so before we break him of all the things he’s doing and get it to a real clean nice motion. But I like the kid and I like his mentality. He’s got tremendous upside.”

Loomis only started punting and place-kicking in ninth grade, and became serious as a sophomore. He previously played eight years of soccer.

A naturally strong leg helped him along, earning first-team all-state as a punter his junior and senior years at Roseburg, and third-team as a place-kicker his final season. He hit field goals of more than 40 yards, including a school-record of 49.

Once Read breaks him of all his bad habits, the next step is directional punting. Loomis is trying to comprehend all the scenarios of what punt to deliver to what area of the field, depending on the situation, and with what hang time.

He’s surprised at all that’s involved in what appears to be a simple task. However, he’s fascinated by it and said he doesn’t plan to place-kick for the Beavers in order to concentrate on punting.

“Probably not,” Loomis said of doing both later. “Punting’s leg swing is so different from kicking that it screws you up if you do both of them extensively.”

There’s enough to worry about punting anyway, with the pressure to deliver right away. The only other punter on the roster is walk-on junior Jon Strowbridge, who hasn’t punted in a game, yet.

Loomis is confident he can step in quickly because he felt at least equivalent to other top recruits who attended the national punting camps he did.

The Beavers considered signing another junior college punter, but wanted someone who could hold the position for a long time.

Strowbridge has come on in the last year with his consistency, so Read believes that Loomis or a combination of him and Strowbridge can carry the team through the season.

“What do you do?” Riley said. “You are only going to have one punter on scholarship. Bruce did a good job evaluating. We expect him to come in and punt. We looked at the junior colleges, but we decided this kid was good enough. He’ll probably struggle a little bit, but he’ll work through it.”