Field Goal Distance Chart: What Kicks Are Realistic at Each Level

“How far should I be able to kick?” is the first question every kicker asks me, and it is the wrong first question — but it deserves a real answer, because the uncertainty around it causes real damage. Kids chase numbers they do not need. Parents compare their son to a leaderboard built for someone three years older. A kicker with a forty-yard make on film gets ignored because his camp chart says forty-one. So here is the honest version: rough distance windows by level, what those numbers mean, and the much more important thing they miss.

Read everything below as planning guidance, not entry requirements. Leagues differ, rosters differ, and a single strong season moves every window. These are the ranges I use to help a kicker figure out where he actually stands.

Rough Distance Windows by Level

Level	Realistic game window	What actually matters at that level
Youth (flag / early tackle)	Short attempts, often inside 25 yards	Learning a repeatable approach and clean contact on a junior ball
Middle school / early high school	Roughly 20–35 yards	Consistency from a hold, basic operation, kicking off the ground or a low tee
Varsity high school	Roughly 30–45 yards, with your best kicks beyond that	Accuracy inside 40, calm operation under pressure, and handling weather
Elite HS / recruited kickers	Consistent in the mid-40s, with 50-plus in practice	Make rate from both hashes and hang time on kickoffs, not just one long make
College (D1 and below)	Mid-40s to 50-plus depending on program	Consistency windows, operation speed, and charted performance over a season
NFL	50s are routine; everything inside 45 is expected	Reliability, not highlights

Notice what the table does not say: it does not say you must hit the top of a row to be valuable. A high school team that has a kicker who is money from 35 yards has a real weapon. Most high school games are decided by attempts well inside that range.

Why Range Bragging Misleads You

Here is the trap. A kicker hits one fifty-yarder on a windless Tuesday, tells everyone, and now believes fifty is his range. But range is not a single number — it is a window with a make rate attached. A kick you make four times out of ten from 50 yards is not “my range,” it is a coin flip with extra steps. Coaches know this, which is why they evaluate kickers on the distances they would actually call a kick for, and at the make rate they would need to call it with confidence.

The useful way to talk about your range is honest ranges: “I’m very confident inside 40, I’d live around 45, and I’ve hit 52 in practice.” That sentence tells a coach everything and pretends nothing. The recruiting numbers conversation goes deeper in what colleges actually ask for, including the hang time side that field goal charts never capture.

What Coaches Actually Evaluate

Consistency windows, not ceilings

A kicker who makes 38 of 40 from inside 40 yards is more valuable to almost every team than a kicker who made one 55-yarder in warmups. Watch what gets charted at camps and you will see it plainly: the make column, by distance, over many attempts. One swing of the leg is a tryout; a chart is a career.

Operation speed

Distance is a party trick if your operation takes two seconds. Snap to kick time — and how little it changes when someone is rushing you — is a bigger separator at every level than most kids realize. It is one of the first things measured at camps, which is worth knowing before you attend one: what happens at a kicking camp walks through exactly how you get scored.

Contact quality

Watch a long make and a long miss frame by frame and the difference is rarely leg speed. It is where the foot met the ball. Contact is the multiplier on everything else you build, and it is trainable at any distance. The mechanics of that are covered in building range the right way — start there before you start adding strength work.

The Safety Framing Nobody Puts in a Highlight Clip

Chasing distance with bad mechanics is how hamstrings, hips and groins get injured, and it is the most common self-inflicted problem I see in young kickers. Distance that arrives before your body supports it does not stay. If your leg is currently your limiter, the order of operations is: fix contact, build leg speed through technique, then add strength. Leg speed is its own skill and the mechanics are laid out in how leg speed makes you a better kicker — do that work before you start max-effort balls in August heat.

Also be honest about your body’s timeline. High schoolers grow at different speeds, and the sophomore who cannot reach 45 yards today often kicks past it as a junior for reasons no drill caused. Train properly, chart honestly, and let the window move with your body instead of dragging it.

What to Do With This Chart

This week, take twenty balls inside your honest window and chart them: distance, direction, and operation time. Write down your make rate by ten-yard band. That chart — not the one you wish were true, the one on the page — is your baseline. Then pick the distance band just outside your best consistent one and work the technique that moves it, one band at a time.

Range is earned in bands, not leaps, and the kicker who knows his own chart will always make better decisions than the one who knows his best kick. That is the whole point of putting numbers on paper: so your next three months of work aim at something real.