Should Kickers Play Another Position? The Trade-Off Answer

“Should my kicker play another position?” It’s the parent question I get more than any other, and it deserves better than a reflexive yes or no. The honest answer changes with age, with workload, and with what the kicking job is worth to that kid — so here is the whole trade-off, not a slogan.

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What Playing Another Position Buys You

The case for it is real, especially young. My whole philosophy is that you should be an athlete first and a kicker second, and other positions are how you get there.

• Athleticism compounds. Chasing ball carriers, planting, cutting and finishing plays build exactly the hips and body control that later show up as swing speed. The best young kickers I watch are almost always athletes first.
• Competitive reps can’t be faked. There is no tee-side substitute for the feel of a live play — reading a block, reacting, finishing. Kickers who have competed in space carry a different calm into special teams work.
• Rosters need it. At smaller schools, the kicker who can also cover a punt or run a route is simply more valuable to keep around. That means more reps, better coaching, and a real role.
• It guards against burnout. A kid who does nothing but kick at age ten is a kid who quits at sixteen. Variety is often the reason he still loves the sport.

The Three Real Risks on the Other Side

Now the honest ledger, because glossing this is how kids get hurt:

1. Contact exposure. A sprained ankle on defense in week three costs you the only asset that matters — healthy kicks on film. Contact positions rent out the one thing a specialist can’t afford to rent out.
2. Leg load. Your legs are the instrument. A week of tackle drills stacked on a full special teams schedule is a load problem, and tired legs change contact long before they ever hurt.
3. Scattered focus. Two positions means two film sessions and two skill sets, and one of them — usually the kicking — improves on leftovers.

My Age-by-Age Answer

Age / level	My call	Why
8–10, youth ball	Play everything	General athlete first. Kicking at this age is enthusiasm plus a tee, and the tee rules are looser anyway.
11–13	Play, but pick the spots	Keep building the athlete — skill spots and defense are fine. Start protecting the legs from silly volume.
14–15, JV	One contact role, max	Enough competition to grow, not enough to bury the leg. Technique work gets serious right about now too.
16–18, varsity	Kick first	The specialist job is now the asset. Spot duty only, and only if the leg tolerates it.
Recruiting senior	Kick only	Every rep goes to the thing coaches are actually grading on your film.

Two of my earlier posts fill in the ends of that table. If you’re wondering when kicking should even start, read the parent’s guide to when kids should start kicking. And before you commit a young kicker to a league setup, skim my rundown of the youth kicking rules parents should know — tee rules and kickoff lines change what’s legal at every age.

If You Do Play Both, Protect the Leg

Playing two ways can work. What can’t work is doing it with no plan. Four rules I’d enforce:

• Tell both coaches the plan. The position coach knows which days the leg works, and the special teams side knows the kick count cap for practice days.
• Guard the kickoff count hardest. Kickoffs are the most expensive rep in the sport. A JV game plus thirty practice kickoffs in the same week is where legs quietly go stale.
• Keep one true rest day. Nothing loads the hip flexor more reliably than doing everything, every day, all season.
• Do the boring maintenance. Hip mobility, basic strength, sleep. The unglamorous stuff is what lets a body hold two jobs. My five ways to stay injury free through a season is the checklist I’d hand you.

One gear note for the young ones: if a kid is kicking at all, the one purchase that matters early is a proper tee. Everything else can wait. Youth kicking tees on Amazon run cheap, and the right tee makes the first year of technique work dramatically easier.

Signals It’s Time to Specialize

The jump from “plays everything” to “kicks first” shouldn’t happen on a date on the calendar. It happens when the signals show up, and they’re pretty consistent:

• The leg starts talking. Hip or hamstring tightness that survives a rest day is a combined-load problem, and it usually shows up right when practice volume spikes.
• The kicking job is won. Once a kid is the varsity specialist, every other snap he plays is a roll of the dice against the one thing he’s genuinely good at.
• The technique plateaus. If his swing stops improving while his kicking time gets squeezed, the schedule is the problem, not the coaching.
• Recruiting enters the picture. The moment coaches are watching film, other positions stop being development and start being risk.

And the reverse matters too. If a kicker is getting no reps, no coaching and no charted kicks at his level, another position might be the only way onto the field at all — and a kicker with live-game reps beats a specialist who never plays.

The Bottom Line I Give Families

Young kicker: play everything, and trust the athleticism to pay you back later. Varsity kicker with college intentions: the leg is a business asset now, so treat it like one. The mistake isn’t playing another position — it’s playing one blindly, with no volume cap and no recovery plan underneath it.

Whichever route you take, the technique has to be built on purpose rather than inherited by accident. That’s why I wrote The Art of Kicking — it walks through the swing, the practice structure and the mental side in the order I’d coach them. Grab it, work the plan, and make every rep you do get count for something.