Spencer Shrader is Building Towards a Big Season

Spencer Shrader was fairly new to field goal kicking when he walked-on at USF. He wasn’t someone who had gone to a ton of kicking coaches and been ranked as one of the top kickers coming out of high school.

A former soccer player, he was self-taught when it came to kicking a football. He found other ways to learn without a private coach: YouTube.

“I remember the first day going out and I had a big leg from soccer,” Shrader recalled when he started out in his last year of high school. “I knew the general technique and so it was really just trial and error at that point.

“I’d YouTube some videos. I'd work on my form throughout summer, but I had no clue what I was doing. I never went to like a single camp like all the kickers are going to nowadays. I didn’t have a kicking coach.”

He eventually found one in Brandon Kornblue out of Fort Myers, Florida. That didn’t happen until he was already in college and it wasn’t an overnight success story for Shrader.

His first two seasons he was 8 of 15 on field goals. He finished his last two years making 20 of 26 (76.9%). He’s been hitting at a higher rate than that in camp for Notre Dame.

That’s not surprising because he’s working with Notre Dame special teams coordinator Marty Biagi, who has a great track record working with kickers. Since 2017, Biagi hasn’t had a kicker with a lower field goal percentage than 77.8%. Overall his kickers made 84.9% of their kicks.

That wasn’t the reason why Shrader decided to come to Notre Dame. He was actually recruited by former coordinator Brian Mason before he left for the Indianapolis Colts and he chose Notre Dame as much for the off the field opportunities as he did for the on the field ones.

The change from Mason to Biagi was not an issue, though, and things have clicked between the player and his new coach.

“Mase recruited me and we had a really close relationship, even though I didn't have that much time to get to know him, but we just really clicked because of how professional he was,” Shrader said. “It's no surprise that he's at the place he's at now. But kind of what I said earlier about when something around you changes … like my mission stayed the same. My goal was then ‘Oh, OK, coach Biagi steps in. My goal is to connect with him. I know he's going to try to help me succeed. I want to help him succeed as a coach, let's grow this relationship.’

“That's how it went from the start, it was a very smooth transition. He’s been incredible every step of the way. Very, very detail oriented and passionate about helping us succeed technique-wise, which is pretty rare in the special teams' world of things for him to be doing what he's doing schematically, but also care about our individual success and want us to reach our goals…really, really cool combination, very blessed to have him.”

Biagi is clearly excited about what he’s seen from Shrader so far this August. The former high-level soccer player, who had opportunities to play in Brazil out of high school, gained valuable experience as a competitor that has translated over to playing football.

“I think more than anything, just the mental toughness, you know,” Biagi asserted about what has made Shrader stand out. “I know that the word gets thrown around a lot, but what's very exciting about Spencer also playing competitive international soccer, having just the mindset where you have to perform on penalty kicks or clutch kicks, it's something that he's already used to doing, you know, with his presence and playing already now in college football games.

“It's really just trying to fine tune—we're working on a couple of different things on his technique because we really just want a really clean ball path. People always ask ‘Well, what's the kickers range?’ Well, to me it doesn't matter what the range is if it's not consistent from that range. So knowing that we can consistently hit that really good ball, and then knowing where our landmark is. We're excited about — he’s having a great camp.”

Shrader has embraced being part of the team at Notre Dame. Even before he was officially enrolled, he traveled to South Bend to train in the spring. He wanted to be acknowledged as an athlete and teammate and not just the kicker.

“I think it actually started pretty early on, so I would travel back and forth in the spring and just train while I could,” Shrader said about being accepted by his teammates. “Obviously, I couldn't do anything with the team officially so I was just working on my own but I was around the facilities, the guys knew my face so they knew I was coming in early and getting work on my own and doing as much as I could. I was really prepared for summer workouts, so summer workouts came around and I'm competing with the big skill group and like winning some of these sprints and some of these conditioning, they’re like, ‘Who is this guy like coming in and actually putting in that work.’

“I think I got a lot of respect at the start of summer and I've just tried to keep building it from there.”

He has done that with his performance in camp. Shrader looks like the next Biagi pupil who is ready to have a big year and Shrader’s big leg is going to be a weapon for the Irish. He finished fourth in the country in touchback percentage on kickoffs last season (80.65%) so he’ll help with more than just field goals.

Shrader’s motivations for choosing Notre Dame are as much about networking and setting himself up for success in business as it is about having success on the field. After working with Biagi, he could end up making a connection with some NFL teams after this season.

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