To be a great placekicker in football, it helps to have a great leg.
Idaho State’s Gabe Panikowski has that. But that doesn’t guarantee results.
“I knew he was pretty talented,” said ISU assistant coach Dan Hawkins, who is mentoring Panikowski and the Bengal specialists this year. “But then again, you’ve got to peel back the onion. It’s like any other position, but particularly there (at kicker) — you’ve got to manage your emotions, your psyche and you don’t really know the ins and outs of that. I’ve been very impressed with Gabe that way.”
So far, there haven’t been too many lows to manage for Panikowksi, a junior who transferred to Idaho State this season after trials at Riverside Junior College and Sacramento State. He is a perfect 12-for-12 on field goal attempts after nailing four against Northern Arizona on Saturday — the only kicker in the Big Sky Conference who has yet to miss.
Already a two-time Big Sky Special Teams Player of the Week, Panikowski kicked the game-winning field goal from 24 yards out as time expired in ISU’s 41-38 win at Cal Poly earlier this season. He didn’t allow the moment to grow too large for him, though.
“With the game-winning kick, I went up to (the offensive line) and I said, ‘Guys, if you can just block as hard as you can for me on this kick, I promise you it’s going to go through,’” Panikowski said after a recent practice. “’ Give me just a little bit more time and I promise…’ It went through.”
Panikowski, a San Diego native, has been practicing mind over matter since he was in the eighth grade, when he walked away from soccer for good and began working with former NFL kicker John Carney. A 23-year-veteran of kicking in the NFL, Carney made 82% of his 580 NFL field goal attempts. He runs a school in San Diego for kicking aspirants like Panikowski.
“It’s something I’ve been doing since high school,” Panikowski said of managing the pressure of being a placekicker. “I’ve been fortunate enough to be around NFL players and NFL free agents since I was a freshman in high school. Through them, I’ve learned that you’ve just got to control what you can control. Everything out there with the pressure, how others perceive you and maybe them seeing you’re lacking in ability to make a field goal — those are things you can’t control. When you focus on that, that’s when kickers really start to go downhill.”
This offseason, Idaho State was looking for a replacement for departing senior Thomas Kopcho at placekicker and to relieve Ross Bulger, who doubles as punter, from some of his kickoff duties. They brought in a couple of kickers to compete for the job, including Panikowski, who was 15-of-21 in field goal attempts at Riverside City College last season. His kicking at Sacramento State in 2022 was limited to kickoff attempts.
In a narrative that has become almost redundant for Bengal players, Panikowski said he was sold almost immediately on the culture at Idaho State.
“As soon as I talked to the coaches here, I could just tell how united the team was,” he said. “When I came here and I saw how everybody operated, I knew this was home for me.”
Hawkins joined his son Cody’s Bengal program late this summer, after resigning his position as head coach at Cal-Davis, and one of his responsibilities is to work directly with the kicking specialists. Hawkins has learned a thing or two about special teams play In his 40-some years of playing and coaching football. But he says you have to be careful not to over-coach the kickers.
“Really I just try to be a sensei with those guys,” said Hawkins. “… You can’t really micro-manage them a lot. I take a lot of videos off my phone and we look at those. To me, it’s more about getting them to self-assess. …He (Panikowski) is very good at it. He’s very good at picking up what he needs to do. And just physically, he has a tremendous amount of power. He’s a very fast individual, he’s got a lot of fast twitch.”
Hawkins says the best kicker he’s coached in his long career is probably Mason Crosby at Colorado. Crosby kicked for the Green Bay Packers for 15 seasons, and made 81% of his field goal attempts.
“(Mason) was very similar (to Panikowski) in that he was very serious about his craft,” said Hawkins. “He was unflappable in terms of the highs and lows.”
But Hawkins uses Crosby and Panikowski as an example to illustrate that one kicking technique doesn’t necessarily fit all.
“We’ve had Mason and Gabe, and both of them are very good kickers. But they do not kick the same,” Hawkins said. “They don’t. So you’ve got to be careful with micromanaging and over-coaching.”
Some kickers have their own sports psychologist. Panikowski, a communications major, is deeply into the psychological aspects of kicking, but he doesn’t have his own counselor.
“Dan Hawkins is really good at it, though,” he said with a smile. “He’s my guy. He’s my Mr. Miyagi.”
Panikowski says the preparation ISU employs with its special teams is the most thorough he’s experienced so far in his college career. Each day, the field goal unit goes outside to practice field goals on its own. It then comes inside the ICCU Dome to work on field goals as part of the team practice.
“That, to me, is just preparation for game time,” he said. “It makes me feel confident. It makes everyone else feel more confident in my kicking ability and how the whole operation works.”
Getting off a field goal is a multi-faceted operation. A good snap, followed by a good hold, is critical to a good kick. Scott Atkinson, a 5-foot-9-inch, 186-pound senior, is the long snapper. Backup quarterback Hunter Hays is in charge of taking the snap and making sure the laces are pointed in the right direction.
“They are phenomenal in what they do,” Panikowski said of his snapper and holder. “They make my job really, really easy. I say that all the time.”
A self-professed foodie (“I love a good steak — medium rare”), who plays the piano and is starting his own clothing company (Black Liquid), Panikowski is clearly more than just a football player. But his post-graduate goal is still to kick in the NFL.
“…The thing I follow is I like to incorporate my dreams into reality whenever I speak,” said Panikowski. “Instead of saying, ‘I want to be in the NFL,’ I say, ‘I will be in the NFL.’ I believe in manifestation and in visualization and all that. I believe it really does work. And what you say out there and what you tell yourself really does matter in the world that we live in.”