Virginia’s Reyering takes a shot at American football

By Whitey Reid

Published: August 15, 2008

During practice on Thursday, Yannick Reyering lined up to kick a 37-yard field goal. Reyering marked off his steps and glanced up at the goal posts.
But just as the ball was snapped from center, Reyering darted to the
outside and received a pitch from the holder.
It was a fake.
However, just as Reyering received the ball and began to turn up field, he was given a rude introduction to American football.
The 6-foot-5 German, who led the Virginia soccer team in scoring last year, was blasted in the chest with a huge hit that looked much more painful than the slide tackles Reyering has been accustomed to for much of his life.
“That was good, that was good,” said Reyering, with a sheepish grin. “It was the first hit that I’ve ever had in football, so it was a good experience. It was good to get hit before the first game.
“It wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. I wanted to get up and tell him, ‘Is that all you got?’ because it didn’t hurt.”
Just a few months ago, nobody could have fathomed that Reyering —who is competing with redshirt freshman Chris Hinkebein and recruited walk-on Robert Randolph to be Virginia’s kicker this season — would ever be on a football field.
After a stellar three-year career on the UVa soccer team — Reyering scored 39 goals and was named All-ACC in each of his years — the native of Mettingen, Germany was selected by FC Dallas in the second round of Major League Soccer’s supplemental draft.
However, since he was still recovering from a late-season knee injury and had yet to earn his college degree, Reyering — who had exhausted his soccer eligibility — elected to give football a try after talking things over with Virginia soccer coach George Gelnovatch.
“I don’t know exactly what it takes to kick field goals because I’ve never done it,” Gelnovatch said, “but he took all of our penalty kicks, which takes a lot of confidence, concentration, proper technique. He’s got all of that stuff.
“I thought he had pretty good ingredients for a field goal kicker.”
Reyering began kicking footballs in April and quickly realized that not only was he pretty good — but he had a passion for it.
Shortly after, he informed people of his intentions to go out for football — American football.
“All the guys on the soccer team were laughing,” said Reyering, whose MLS rights belong to Dallas for three years, “and they all wanted to have the first pictures of me wearing shoulder pads and a helmet. It was funny.”
Meanwhile, Reyering’s parents were a bit concerned.
“They support me in everything I do,” Reyering said, “but my mom obviously was worried about me getting hit — but I told her I would be fine.”
Reyering, sans the fake field goal attempt, certainly looked fine in Thursday’s practice. Wearing uniform No. 10 — he wore No. 11 in soccer — the 24-year-old looked to have the strongest leg of the kicking hopefuls, consistently booming the ball out of the end zone on kickoffs.
Reyering says coaches have told him not to worry about direction on his kickoffs and to just blast it as far as he can.
As one would expect, Reyering seems to be more of a work in progress on his field goals.
“All the coaches are always giving me advice and telling me what I can do better,” he said. “So far, so good. I’m just trying to go out there and get better every day. Every day I kick, I learn something new.”
Reyering says the biggest difference between kicking a soccer ball and a football are the stakes.
“I think there’s a whole lot more pressure on you in football,” Reyering said. “If you kick a ball in soccer — a free kick or something — and miss it, it’s not that big of a deal.
“But I like being under pressure.”
Reyering misses playing soccer — he says it’s “painful” when he can sometimes see his former teammates practicing on an adjacent field — but those feelings seem to subside whenever he dreams of making a big kick in football.
“I drove by Scott Stadium and looked down there and thought about what it would be like to kickoff or make a field goal in front of 63,000 people,” he said. “That would be nuts.”
Whenever Reyering scored a goal in soccer, he was know for a celebration in which he raced around the field with his arms spread wide as if he was a human airplane.
Reyering isn’t sure what he’ll do if he ever has a chance to let loose on the gridiron after a big kick.
“I heard they have some new rules about excessive celebration,” said Reyering, smiling, “so I think I have to take it a little easier this year.”