A. K. A. THE TOE : Blottiaux Takes Aim at Some Long Shots, Comes Away With Big Winners for Servite

You’re standing in the middle of a football field squinting through the noon sun to see a goal post 50 yards away. Next to you is Pat Blottiaux, a square-framed kid with a crew cut and a booming Mr. Microphone voice, who may be the best high school kicker in the state and, according to several scouting publications, the country.

From where you stand, the goal post appears to be an inch wide. In his three-year varsity career at Servite High School, Blottiaux has kicked six field goals from this distance or farther.

He is the best kicker Leo Hand, Servite coach, has ever seen. Hand once persuaded a 16-year-old soccer player named Bob Thomas to kick for his junior varsity team at McQuaid Jesuit High School in Rochester, N.Y. Thomas went on to kick at Notre Dame and for the Chicago Bears.

“Pat is much farther along than Bob was,” Hand said. “It’s not even close. To give you an idea, Bob set a national high school record back then with a kick of 48 yards. That’s practically a chip shot for Pat.”

Blottiaux kicked a 47-yarder when he was on Servite’s freshman team. As a sophomore on the varsity, he kicked field goals of 47, 48 and 52 yards in a playoff game against Marina. As a junior, he kicked a 50-yarder against St. Bernard.

And this season, Blottiaux has made kicks of 56, 55, 51 and 50 yards.

He is 7 for 13 this season; 4 of those misses were from 58, 59, 61 and 62 yards, all in the opening game of the season against Colton.

“I knew I was in trouble when I saw that the goal posts in back of me were closer than the ones I was kicking at,” he said.

Back at the football field, he is kicking at nothing. He makes his approach, plants his left foot and lets go with his right leg. The leg is up, down and through an imaginary ball so quickly that the clap of wind created sounds much like a driver striking through a golf ball.

The movement, rehearsed countless times over the last four years, is like that of a dancer. Of course, Blottiaux, at 6-feet and 200 pounds, with his leg extended about three feet off the ground and the toe of his high-top basketball shoe pointed toward the goal, looks like the Rockette no one likes to talk about.

But they do talk about him and swoon over him and ooh and aah when his foot slugs through a ball like a chain saw through warm Velveeta. On a team that boasts major college prospects such as linebackers Mike Petko and Garrett Greedy and junior running back Derek Brown, Blottiaux is the most recognizable. Unlike the others, who busy themselves with the mesh and chaos of football, “Blo the Toe,” as he has come to be known, stands alone.

He practices by himself. He wins games and sets records standing alone in a spotlight, seven yards behind the line of scrimmage, standing upright while all around him crouch and kneel and scrounge around the ground.

When the Friars go in for a halftime talk, Blottiaux and his hand-picked holder, Tom Nieto, stay on the field to kick and keep his leg warm.

“People may think I’m goofing off,” Blottiaux said. “But the most important thing to a kicker is to stay warm and stretched. If not, you could pull a hamstring or a groin muscle, and if that happens, you’re history. So it just wouldn’t do me or the team any good to sit inside tightening up.”

Hand, recognizing this, has given Blottiaux free rein to do what he wants.

“The kid is just great, and I, quite honestly, have had nothing to do with it,” he said. “I let him do whatever he wants. . . . I tell people I’m a great kicking coach. When Pat makes one I say, ‘Hey, good kick.’ When he misses one, I say, ‘Hey, not such a good kick.’ And that’s about all I do.”

So, as Hand and the rest of his team prepare for daily practice with film studies and strategy sessions, Blottiaux and Nieto work for an hour on an empty football field.

“We just go about getting our work done,” Blottiaux said. “When the team comes out, I’ll do some kickoff work with them and then I’m pretty much done.”

As for kickoffs, that seems to have pretty much become a formality, because Blottiaux usually sends the ball into the outer atmosphere. In three seasons, he has failed to kick the ball out of the end zone only five times.

“It got so that some of the special teams coaches asked me to leave the ball a little short so their players could have a chance to hit someone,” Blottiaux said. “I did that once, but Coach Hand found out and told me to kick away.”

In a game against Fountain Valley this season, he kicked a ball that hit the upper right goal post at Glover Stadium. In another game at Glover, he cleared the cinder block fence that surrounds the stadium. The fence is eight feet high and at least 20 yards back from from the end zone.

“I never got that ball back,” he said. “I just hope I didn’t break anyone’s windows.”

Nieto, a longtime friend of Blottiaux’s, is a three-year varsity soccer player. He had to be persuaded by Blottiaux to come out for the football team.

“When the extent of your duties is holding a football on the ground, well, that doesn’t exactly sound thrilling,” Nieto said. “I must admit, even now, I don’t really consider myself a part of the team. I like the guys and games but, let’s face it, I hold the ball for one second.”

Blottiaux has no such problems with his specialization, because he has personally saved the Friars on several occasions. Most recently, his 56- and 55-yard field goals were the only scoring in a 6-0 victory over Marina.

With Blottiaux on his side, Hand knows his team is in scoring position when Servite reaches the opponent’s 40.

“He changes the whole complexion of a game,” Hand said. “He gives us a tremendous advantage. Most teams have to drive to the 20 to even have a chance at a kick. I’m feeling just fine when we’re at the 40 ‘cause I can see Pat warming up down there.”

Things weren’t always as rosy for Blottiaux, who remembers more than a few sideways looks when he made it to the varsity as a sophomore.

“When I’d mess up something, I could hear people say, ‘What is he doing here?’ ” Blottiaux said.

On a rain-soaked field, Blottiaux missed three field goal attempts against Edison. The Friars lost the game, and Blottiaux could feel the heat of missing his kicks of 45, 55 and 57 yards.

“When he got home that night, he was shook,” said Tom Blottiaux, Pat’s father. “I realized then how much pressure is put on a kicker. I made up my mind then that we wouldn’t dwell on things. That we’d try to keep things upbeat.”

It was his father who first suggested that Pat give football a try. It was Pat’s freshman year at Servite, and Pat found football pretty dull compared to the sport of his choice--soccer.

He had been playing soccer since he was 5, and he planned to continue playing at Servite. But he grew so quickly as a child that the joints in his knees and ankles would ache after running.

Tom suggested that he try kicking a football, and because Tom didn’t know the first thing about the subject, he went out and read a few books. Then they went to the park and tried it out.

“He could do it right away,” Tom said. “I mean, boom, he was good right then.”

And, boom, schools such as UCLA, Nebraska and Syracuse have come calling for him.

When Blottiaux was a sophomore, Hand made the outrageous statement that Pat would kick a 60-yard field goal by the time he was a senior.

He backs away from you 10 yards, and swats his leg at another imaginary ball. There is no doubt in your mind. The kick was good.