HANOVER – For Owen Zalc, it was all so easy.
The 5-foot-10, 165-pound kicker was a Freshman All-American and first-team All-Ivy League pick in 2023 when he set the Ivy League record for field goals in a season by hitting 17-of-21 attempts.
A year later, he tied the Ivy League record with a 54-yarder on his way to a 13-of-17 season and a second selection to the All-Ivy first team.
Last fall, he booted a 51-yard field goal as time expired to give Dartmouth a 17-16 Homecoming win over Yale, but he would finish the year just 9-of-18, missing one more kick than in his first two seasons combined.
Zalc never made excuses, but there was an explanation.
“I was dealing with hip problems kind of throughout my freshman year, and then a lot of my sophomore year,” he said after practice this week. “I had an MRI toward the end of my sophomore year.”
What the imaging revealed was a labrum issue that was repaired with surgery that January. He was told the recovery would take six or seven months, which just about bumped up against the start of preseason last fall.
That’s not a good recipe for someone who does what he does.
“It’s tough with a labrum for a kicker because it’s obviously hip-driven,” Zalc explained. “It’s one thing to recover enough to run. It’s another thing to recover with the intention of kicking.”
Coaches often compare kicking to a golf swing, and Zalc, who enjoys an occasional visit to a par-3 course back home in North Carolina, buys that idea.
“I think golf is the best analogy because if one thing's out of line, the ball's not going to go where you want it to go,” he said. “The club face could be too open. The swing path could be slow. All that kind of stuff.”
The other piece of the analogy is the mental approach. If you think you are going to top the golf ball, good luck getting it airborne.
Zalc, as happy-go-lucky a kicker as you’ll find, said all the right things to the press, and wore a smile in public, but inside he was struggling as the kicks he made without thinking the previous two years sailed wide right and wide left.
“It was very frustrating,” he admitted. “I kept looking at the stats instead of taking it one kick at a time. I’m thinking, oh, I’ve got to make every kick for the stat sheet instead of having fun the way I did when I was a freshman.
“It’s fun to kick. It’s fun to play football and I needed to remember that.”
His injury issue and recovery now behind him, he’s back to being the occasionally goofy kid having fun again. He credits his father, Eli, who has been his kicking coach since he took up the skill in seventh grade.
He also credits the Dartmouth Peak Performance sports psychologist for helping him remember that what he’s doing should be fun.
He’s heading into his final season confident that the troubles he had a year ago are behind him.
“This is the best physically I’ve felt in a while,” he said. “Last year was tough coming off surgery and getting cleared pretty much right before camp. Beyond the physical, this is probably the best I’ve felt mentally in a while as well.
“This year I’m big on having fun with it and really enjoying my final season. Surgery really takes a toll both on your body and your mind, and it did on me last year. I’ve had to focus on recovering from that and I think it’s been a good process. I’m really happy with where I am right now, and the (support of the other) specialists has been a huge part of that.”
Coach Sammy McCorkle believes the kicker he saw two and three years ago is back.
“He’s in a good place,” he said. “He’s such a competitor. Last year wasn’t what he wanted. He’s the hardest critic of himself and it got into his head. I think he’s done a great job getting himself physically and mentally back to where he was.”
Zalc is confident without the slightest hint of cockiness. He said the biggest surprise for him as a freshman wasn’t how accurate he was. It was how much confidence his coach had in him, and it’s back if it ever wavered.
“At the end of the day, I know myself and knew what I was capable of,” he said. “I was very fortunate to have a coach who trusted me and put me in a position where I could get that many field goals.
“Everything kind of fell into place, and I’m excited for that to happen again this year. I know what I can do, and I think this year it will come back.”