Persistence Pays for Chiefs’ Lowery : Pro football: Kicker caught on in 12th tryout.

A man with less perseverance than kicker Nick Lowery would have found another line of work a long time ago.

In only two seasons, 1978 and 1979, Lowery was released or rejected 11 times by eight NFL teams. The Chargers were among those who tried him out and found they could get along without him.

To continue eating regularly, Lowery worked as a waiter, a lifeguard, a French instructor and a legislative aide to Sens. John Chafee and Robert Packwood. After all, he had majored in government at Dartmouth.

By that time, Lowery made up his mind that if he ever got another chance, it would be his last. Incredibly, in tryout No. 12, with the Kansas City Chiefs in 1980, he took the kicking job from Jan Stenerud.

And as improbable as that was, Lowery’s saga didn’t end there. Consider the numbers that he will carry into San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium on Sunday when the Chiefs hit town for the Chargers’ home finale:

* He is the most accurate field-goal kicker in NFL history. He has made 253 field goals in 322 career attempts (78.6%).

* He holds the league record of 18 field goals of 50 yards or more, including two of 58 yards and one of 57. He broke Stenerud’s record of 17 last season.

* He holds the league record of eight seasons with at least 100 points, having broken a tie with Stenerud this year.

* He has the third highest extra-point percentage of all time--99.2%--with 372 conversions in 375 attempts. Tommy Davis, formerly of the San Francisco 49ers, holds the record of 99.4%. Gary Anderson, still kicking for the Pittsburgh Steelers, is second at 99.3%.

* He ranks 10th on the all-time scoring list with 1,131 points. George Blanda is No. 1 with 2,002.

* He ranks ninth all-time in field goals made with his total of 253. Stenerud has the record of 373.

* He was voted into the Pro Bowl this week for the second time. He also made it in 1981.

Lowery, 34, is kicking as well as he ever has, perhaps better. He leads the league in both scoring with 118 points and in field goals with 28 in 31 attempts. Both are career highs, and the Chiefs still have two games to play.

Might he have a chance at Stenerud’s career field-goal record?

“Oh yes,” Lowery said this week. “I think I have a good shot at it. I could do it in four or five more years, and I’m sure I can last that long.”

One reason for such confidence is that Lowery went on a weight program last summer for the first time. Lowery’s decision to beef up followed a lackluster 1989 season. He had his lowest field-goal percentage in eight years, 72.7, prodding the Chiefs to try out other kickers. Now, at 6-foot-4 and 205 pounds, up from 190, he is in the best condition of his career.

Lowery, whose given name is Dominic, was born in Munich, Germany, the son of a political analyst for the U.S. State Department.

“I lived in Munich only about eight months,” he said. “When I was 8, we moved to London, and I played rugby. That’s where I learned to kick field goals. Later on we moved to Bonn, Germany, where my father was an adviser to Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.”

By the the time Lowery reached high school age, his father’s duties had taken him to Washington, D.C. The family lived in suburban McLean, Va., where a next-door neighbor was Supreme Court Justice Byron (Whizzer) White, former star NFL running back for the Steelers and Detroit Lions.

At Dartmouth, Lowery played football and baseball, and he aspired to be a major-league pitcher.

As it was, Lowery signed as a free agent with the New York Jets after graduation in 1978. Thus began the long, tortuous odyssey that was to lead him to prominence in Kansas City.

“Before the third preseason game, I was told I would do all the kicking,” he said. “They said unless I screwed up, I’d have the job. I screwed up, so they cut me. I tried a 38-yard field goal, and it was short by three yards.”

After that, Lowery was cut four more times--by the New England Patriots later in 1978 and by the Cincinnati Bengals once and the Washington Redskins twice in 1979. Also, he had unsuccessful auditions with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Philadelphia Eagles in 1978 and the New Orleans Saints, Chargers, Eagles and Jets in 1979.

Only with the Patriots did Lowery kick in regular-season play. He filled in for the injured John Smith for two games in 1978, kicking seven conversions without a miss but failing in his only field-goal attempt.

“It was a 45-yarder into the wind,” he said. “They cut me after that, but it just made me get better.”

Lowery’s experience in Cincinnati wasn’t all roses, either.

“Homer Rice was the coach,” he said. “When he cut me, he said, ‘I can’t remember you missing a kick.’ I felt like punching him.”

In Washington, Lowery was signed twice and released twice in a span of 10 days. Bobby Beathard, now general manager of the Chargers, was the Redskins’ general manager then.

“That was the low point for me,” Lowery said.

“There was a man named Dick Johnson who taught me about kicking and also about life. I was his first protege, starting when I was a freshman in high school. When I kept getting cut, he was one of the people along with my parents who kept me from getting down on myself. He told me, ‘It’s not important how many times you fall, but how many times you get up.’ It was a bromide, but it helped.”

Lowery got his tryout with the Chargers when they lost Rolf Benirschke for the 1979 season because of illness.

“I was going against Mike Wood, and I outkicked him in training camp,” Lowery said. “I hit three for six from outside the 40 into a gale wind, and he was 0 for 6. Yet they kept him, which was the most frustrating cut of all.”

Still ahead was Lowery’s 11th and last setback, and it came where it had all begun, with the Jets. “I outkicked everybody in camp,” he said. “But I thought to myself, ‘These idiots are going to cut me anyway,’ and that’s what happened.”

The Chiefs called after the 1979 season, an off year for Stenerud. “I had to give up my job with the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee,” Lowery said, “but I wanted to try one more time.”

Asked how Stenerud had reacted to him, Lowery said, “He was pleasant; a little cool, but pleasant. He thought it was a little bizarre for me to go from working in the Senate to playing football. They had brought in kickers every year, so I don’t think he realized the competition was as serious as it was.

“We split the kicking in the preseason, and that miffed him a little bit. In the third game, they told him I’d be doing all the kicking. I felt like I’d paid my dues. I made a 42-yarder, and they released him after the game.

“I didn’t get a chance to talk to him then, but since then we’ve become good friends. He’s living in Kansas City now.

“Getting cut was a tragic thing for him, but he signed with Green Bay and hit 22 out of 24 one year. Then he went to Minnesota and made the Pro Bowl. I was happy for him.”

As pleased as Lowery is to hold the NFL record for field-goal accuracy, he won’t consider his career complete unless he can kick in the Super Bowl.

“Setting a standard nobody else has done means a lot to me,” he said. “But a record isn’t something you can cuddle up with at night. A Super Bowl ring is.”