Former Fountain Valley Kicker Hopes to Make Points in the NFL

For Micky Penaflor, the next few weeks could mean the difference between kicking footballs in the National Football League and running a restaurant.

Penaflor, a kicker and hotel and restaurant management major at Northern Arizona University, is doing his best to show that he should be kicking field goals and extra points instead of scheduling shifts for waiters.

His first job interview will be on Jan. 13 at the Hula Bowl in Hawaii, where Penaflor will handle the kicking and punting for the West team. Then Penaflor will fly from Honolulu to Los Angeles to San Jose in time to play in the Martin Luther King All-American game on Jan. 15.

Penaflor, who kicked for Fountain Valley High School, is the most prolific kicker in Northern Arizona’s history. He kicked 48 field goals and scored 242 points--both school records--in three seasons as a starter. This season he was named to five Division I-AA All-American teams, twice as a second-team selection and three times as an honorable mention.

Penaflor is encouraged by the feedback that he has received. Scouts from the Minnesota Vikings watched him kick field goals of 60, 61 and 62 yards during practice at the Lumberjacks’ domed stadium in Flagstaff, Ariz. Hula Bowl officials say Penaflor was rated highly by NFL scouts who were consulted when the all-star teams were chosen. Coaches say he has the mental makeup and physical ability to play pro football.

Unlike many kickers he has coached, Fountain Valley Coach Mike Milner said Penaflor always knew what was required of him in a given situation.

“He is the type of kicker (who is) already prepared for that moment,” Milner said.

Larry Kentera, the Northern Arizona coach who resigned late in the Lumberjacks’ 3-8 season, said NFL teams will give Penaflor a shot.

“I think he’s got the range in field goals to be given that opportunity and be seriously considered,” Kentera said.

Still, Penaflor harbors no thoughts that it will be easy to catch on with an NFL team. There are no guarantees, so Penaflor is ready if necessary to start a non-football career after his expected graduation this summer.

“I’ve never really had it easy,” Penaflor said. “No one gave me the spot in high school and no one gave me the spot in college. I had to work at it.”

Penaflor, 23, was raised in a sporting family. His father, Manuel, was a standout lineman at Santa Ana High, played in the first Orange County All-Star football game in 1959 and attended California on an athletic scholarship.

Manuel, now a teacher and an assistant soccer coach at Santa Ana, was an assistant football coach at the school for 13 years until he resigned in 1978 in order to spend more time coaching his children.

The four Penaflor children all have excelled in sports. Micky’s older brother, Louis, 25, was captain of the Fountain Valley wrestling team and played soccer for Cal Lutheran. His younger sister, Cathy, 20, was a four-year starter on Fountain Valley’s soccer team. His youngest brother, Joe, 17, was Fountain Valley’s most valuable soccer player last year as a sophomore fielder. As a captain and goalkeeper, Joe has seven shutouts in 14 games this season.

When Micky Penaflor was a freshman at Fountain Valley, he was recruited from the soccer team to kick for the freshman football team. Penaflor has always liked football and remembers trailing his father on the sideline holding the cord of his headphones during Santa Ana games, but he never thought he would play because of his size.

Penaflor said he wasn’t a very good kicker initially, but improved yearly and started attending clinics in Long Beach in the spring of his freshman year. At the clinics put on by Ben Agajanian, who kicked for 13 teams in three professional football leagues, Penaflor refined his skills and worked with such kickers as Norm Johnson of the Seattle Seahawks and former UCLA standout John Lee.

By his senior season, Penaflor was Fountain Valley’s starter and good enough to play in the 1985 Orange County all-star game. He wasn’t offered any scholarships, but a Northern Arizona assistant coach saw him kick a 49-yard field goal in the all-star game and asked him to walk on at the school.

Given a scholarship at the end of his redshirt freshmen year, Penaflor has thrived in the high-scoring Big Sky Conference and the high altitude of Flagstaff. After growing about two inches and gaining about 25 pounds, he is now 5-feet-9, 175 pounds.

Last season against Northern Iowa, in a game televised by ESPN, Penaflor made six of seven field goals. In three seasons as the Lumberjacks’ starter, he has missed only three extra points. This season he also punted, averaging 40.3 yards and pinning opponents inside the 20-yard line 18 times.

But when the NFL holds its two-day draft in June, Penaflor knows it is unlikely he will be selected on the first day. It’s possible he won’t be among those chosen in the 12 rounds. But at the least, he is expecting to try out for some teams as a free agent.

But if he isn’t able to sign with an NFL team next year, Penaflor said, he will continue trying out for three or four more years. Agajanian, who after his playing career ended in 1964 has served as a kicking consultant for various NFL teams, tells his students that it might take more than one attempt to break into the league.

Penaflor, who says he hasn’t missed two consecutive field goals since his junior year in high school and only missed two penalty kicks in 12 years of soccer, said his ability to concentrate will help him in his quest.

“Kickers are here today and gone tomorrow,” he said. “That’s why you have to be stable and not worry about what other people say.”