At every camp and combine, there is a table with a clipboard on it, and that clipboard decides more kicking careers than any coach’s memory ever will. On it: your name, your distance rounds, your make column, your operation times, your hang times. You will kick maybe twenty balls, and everything you are that day becomes a row of numbers. If you have never been charted before, that day can feel like a lottery. It does not have to. Charting has a structure, and once you know the structure, you can practice for it — and, better, you can run the same structure on yourself all season.
Let me walk you through how charting actually works, what the numbers mean, and how to build your own sheet so nothing about a camp day is a surprise.
What Charting Actually Is
Charting is just structured record-keeping: every kick gets logged with a distance, an outcome, a direction, and usually a quality note. That is the whole concept. The power is in what the columns reveal — patterns a kicker cannot feel mid-session. A chart shows that your misses cluster at one distance band, that your left-hash kicks draw more than your right, that your operation time drifts by three tenths after twenty kicks. None of that is visible from the ground while you are kicking, and none of it is memorable afterwards. Charts are how you turn practice into evidence.
The Standard Chart, Column by Column
Most camps and combines run some version of this sheet, and you should steal it for your own sessions:
| Column | What it records | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Distance | The yard line of the attempt, plus the hash | Your make rate by band, not one lucky number |
| Result | Make, or miss with direction (wide left, wide right, short) | The fault pattern a coach would spot in one page |
| Operation time | Snap to kick, in seconds | Whether your timing holds when it matters |
| Contact / flight | Clean, or scrape, hook, draw, knuckle | The technical cause behind the outcome column |
Hang time gets charted on kickoffs and punts, usually in seconds. The exact benchmarks vary by level and by who is running the chart, so treat published numbers as orientation and your own chart as the baseline that counts. What matters at a camp is not that your number matches a myth — it is that it lands in a consistent, believable range with the rest of your kicks.
How Camps and Combines Run the Day
Charting events tend to follow a predictable rhythm, and knowing it lets you spend your energy where it counts:
- Distance rounds. You kick from increasing distances and your make column fills up. This is where kickers with one good range number get exposed, and kickers with honest windows look calm.
- Pressure rounds. Kickers kick in groups, one after another, with everyone watching and a make-or-advance format. The skill tested is not range — it is whether your routine survives an audience.
- Operation timing. A stopwatch on your snap-to-kick. The time itself matters less than its consistency across reps; a kicker whose operation is steady is easier to trust than a faster one who varies.
- Kickoff and hang time rounds for those being evaluated as kickoff specialists — distance, hang time, and placement, usually charted together.
If you want the full anatomy of a camp day before you spend money on one, that is covered properly in what happens at a kicking camp and how to prepare. Knowing the format in advance is the difference between preparing for it and merely attending it.
Chart Yourself the Same Way
Here is the part I would build immediately, regardless of any camp on your calendar: run your own sessions on the same format. A phone on a tripod, a written sheet, twenty balls. Ten from your honest game range, five from just beyond it, and five kickoffs with hang time estimated from a partner’s count or a video timer. Log every rep in the columns above. It costs you nothing but honesty, and after four sessions you will know more about your own kick than most kickers learn in a year.
Two habits make self-charting actually work. First, chart the contact column even on makes — the cause matters more than the result, and a make off a bad contact is a future miss. Second, review the sheet the same day, while the feels are fresh, and write one sentence about what you will change next session. The full review rhythm — what to film, what to look for, how often — is laid out in the film study guide for kickers, and charting is its backbone.
What to Do With the Numbers Afterwards
A chart only has value if it changes something. After a camp or a charted session, do three things. Find the distance band with the weakest make rate — that is your training target, not your best distance. Find your operation time spread — if it swings wildly, your routine is not built yet. And find your miss direction pattern, because a consistent bias is a technique message, not bad luck.
Then let the numbers feed the rest of your recruiting. A chart with a story — consistency by band, stable operation, honest misses — belongs in your outreach to coaches, and it pairs with the film itself. If you have not built the film side yet, start with how to structure a highlight reel, then fold the outreach piece in through the recruiting tips for athletes. Numbers plus film is the combination coaches actually evaluate; either one alone is half an argument.
The Mindset Shift Charting Gives You
The deeper value of all this is not the numbers. It is that a kicker who reads his own chart stops being surprised by his own performance. The miss you saw coming on paper does not rattle you the way the one you did not see coming does. Confidence built on charts survives bad days, because it is built on evidence instead of mood — and that is the difference between a kicker who has good days and a kicker who has a good career.
So run one full charting session this week, same format a camp would use, same columns, twenty balls. Bring the sheet to your next practice and aim your training at the weakest row. That is how specialists get better on purpose instead of by accident — and if you want a coach’s eyes on your chart and film, that is exactly what I do in one-on-one coaching: read the numbers, find the technique behind them, and build the plan from there.
