‘This kid just won’t give up’: Student who practiced alone for two-plus years ready to answer Arizona State’s call for a kicker

The text message arrived this past Saturday as Arizona State aviation student Nolan Krinsky was preparing for a training flight.

A friend asked if Krinsky had seen Arizona State football coach Kenny Dillingham’s scathing rant after a loss at Cincinnati earlier that day.

Irate that his starting kicker missed a pair of fourth-quarter field goals that would have pulled the Sun Devils within a touchdown, Dillingham stared out at a sea of smartphones and TV cameras and proclaimed, “If you can kick and you’re at Arizona State, email me.” Dillingham went on to say that he was “dead serious” about holding kicking tryouts, adding “We’ve got to find somebody that can make a field goal.”

To many Arizona State fans, Dillingham’s tirade was comedy gold. To Krinsky, it was the answer to his prayers. For two-plus years, Krinsky had trained by himself on desolate campus soccer fields and all but begged for the chance to showcase his powerful leg to Arizona State coaches. Now the former high school kicker hoped to prove to Dillingham that the antidote to the Sun Devils’ season-long field goal woes had been under his nose the entire time.

Shortly before stepping into the cockpit of a single-engine Cessna 172, Krinsky posted a video on X of himself booming a 60-yard field goal through the uprights and tagged a dozen Arizona State football-themed accounts. The caption read, “I am a kicker, punter [and] holder and have been trying to walk onto the team for three years now. I love kicking and putting in the work. @KennyDillingham if you give me a tryout, I promise I won’t disappoint.”

Krinsky turned his phone off for several hours during his training flight. The deluge of reposts and compliments that his post inspired was unknown to the aspiring commercial pilot until he landed at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport and glanced at his mentions for the first time.

“Once I saw that it had started blowing up, I was like holy cow,” Krinsky told Yahoo Sports. “It was crazy how fast it was spreading and how many positive comments I was getting. I was literally shaking as I read them all.”

Buried in the onslaught of messages were two promising signs that Krinsky’s dream was poised to become reality. The first was that Dillingham had followed him on X. The second was Arizona State’s director of scouting sharing his phone number and promising to stay in touch.

By the following day, Krinsky had nailed down an opportunity he once feared might never come. At 11 a.m. PT on Wednesday morning, more than two years after he set a goal of walking onto the Arizona State football team, Krinsky is finally scheduled to try out.

“It’s kind of like asking the prettiest girl in school out and having her tell you no every day for two years,” said former TCU kicker Jaden Oberkrom, Krinsky’s longtime kicking coach. “If he kicks really good in that tryout this week, she might say yes for the first time.”

‘This kid just won’t give up’

Long before he first pictured himself kicking footballs for Arizona State, Nolan Krinsky dreamed of becoming a pilot. The son of a decorated Air Force veteran grew up on military bases in Hawaii and Maryland before relocating to Frisco, Texas, after his father transitioned to piloting commercial planes.

It wasn’t until Krinsky was an upperclassman at Wakeland High School that he began to believe he could continue kicking in college. He made Wakeland’s varsity football team as a high school junior, blossomed into an all-district kicker and punter and received glowing evaluations on the camp circuit.

“College football is in his future,” gushed former All-American kicker Chris Sailer the summer before Krinsky’s senior year, praising the big-legged teenager’s 50-plus-yard range and ability to perform well under pressure.

When he began applying to colleges, Krinsky searched for schools where he could nurture his passion for aviation without hanging up his football cleats. He only considered universities with top-tier aviation programs and Division I football, places that didn’t recruit him out of high school but that might give him a chance to earn a roster spot as a walk-on.

In late summer 2022, soon after enrolling at Arizona State, Krinsky showed up to an open tryout hoping to prove himself. The way Krinsky remembers it, he punted and kicked capably enough that then-Arizona State special teams coach Shawn Slocum invited him back to try out again the following spring.

That door abruptly slammed shut when Arizona State fired Herm Edwards three games into the 2022 season and replaced him with Dillingham at the end of a dismal nine-loss season. There were no holdovers from the previous regime, no one with any knowledge of Slocum’s apparent interest in a first-year aviation student with a powerful leg.

Rather than moping over the setback, Krinsky chose to take solace in a D-I special teams coach seeing something in him.

“That was a huge motivation for me,” Krinsky said. “I promised myself I’d keep working in case I got another walk-on opportunity again.”

Over the past two years, Krinsky has more than fulfilled that vow. At least once or twice a week, he practices punting, field goals or kickoffs at a local high school or a soccer field on the Arizona State Polytechnic campus. Occasionally, a friend accompanies him to shag balls or shoot video. More often than not, it’s just Krinsky and his camera.

On weekend mornings, Krinsky often participates in group training sessions organized by Phoenix-area private kicking coaches Steve Rausch or Alex Zendejas. The technical instruction and feedback is valuable for Krinsky, as is the chance to compare himself to elite high school, college and professional kickers — even the current kickers on the Arizona State roster.

When Krinsky returns home to Frisco during breaks in the school calendar, he doesn’t take that time off. He inevitably texts Dallas-area kicking coach Jaden Oberkrom the week before to say, “Hey, I’m coming to town. I want to get in as many sessions as I can.”

Between kicking sessions on the practice field and frequent strength training at the gym, Krinsky “has improved dramatically since high school,” Oberkrom said. Not only does Krinsky now boast the range to blast field goals from up to 60-65 yards, he’s also making strides becoming more consistent from shorter distances.

To Oberkrom, Krinsky’s perseverance is his most impressive trait. He has worked steadily for two-plus years without any games to prepare for or any assurance an opportunity will come.

In a notes file on Krinsky’s phone is a long list of Arizona State football-related Twitter handles — coaches, recruiting coordinators, media outlets, even student interns. Every week or two, he tags those handles with videos showcasing his feats on the practice field and a reminder that he’s ready in case an opportunity arises.

When he attends Arizona State home games, he studies the special teams unit and envisions himself punting or kicking field goals. When the Sun Devils hold open practices, he shows up just to introduce himself to staff members.

Before this week, when he asked if he could try out, the response has always been no.

“I don’t know a lot of kids who would have stuck with it as long as he has,” Oberkrom said. “He’s been told no so many times and he’s never thrown in the towel. I seriously thought he was just psychotic the way he was chasing it, but I loved it at the same time. I was like, man, this kid just won’t give up.”

‘I think I’m going to ball out’

It’s difficult to evaluate how big an opportunity Krinsky has on Wednesday without knowing exactly what Dillingham hopes to achieve from the open tryout.

Is he truly looking to find a kicker to push or even replace redshirt sophomore Ian Hershey? Or is he merely looking to light a fire under Hershey and his fellow kickers (Ohio State graduate transfer Parker Lewis and redshirt freshman Carston Kieffer)? Hershey and Kieffer are a combined 7-for-13 on field goals this season, including 3-for-9 from beyond 30 yards.

If Dillingham is serious about giving prospective walk-ons an evaluation, then Krinsky’s coaches believe he has a real chance to impress.

“The kid has a big leg and he’s hungry,” Zendejas said.

Added Oberkrom, “Anyone with eyes can hop on his Twitter and see that he’s got talent. The videos speak for themselves.”

The way Zendejas sees it, Krinsky’s work ethic and resilience should set him apart from his peers at tryouts as much as his leg strength. How many other former high school kickers, Zendejas wonders, are still toiling away in anonymity like Krinsky almost three years after they last played a competitive game?

“The kid comes out and works,” Zendejas said. “When you see a kid in his position still grinding, putting three, four days a week into the kicking game, that means he wants it. That means he’s working for this opportunity. When people just come out of the woodwork because they hear this story, man, c’mon. You don’t want this. You gave up when you didn’t get an opportunity.”

If Krinsky goes on to seize this opportunity, it wouldn’t be the first time a kicker came out of nowhere to make a splash. Dallas Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey worked a 9-to-5 job as a software engineer before deciding to first dabble in place kicking at age 24. Detroit Lions kicker Jake Bates had given up on football 18 months ago and had taken a job selling bricks.

Krinsky isn’t allowing himself to dream about following in those footsteps. He is focused on nothing more than competing to the best of his ability at Wednesday’s tryout and on not putting too much pressure on himself.

“I think I’m going to ball out,” Krinsky said. “But if I miss a kick, I think they want to see how I’m going to react to that, if I’m going to pick myself up and go back and make the next kick. They want to see the character of the kicker more than making every field goal.”

When asked what it would mean to make the Arizona State roster as a walk-on, Krinsky admits he doesn’t even know if words can describe it.

“It would mean the world to me,” he said. “It would be the best feeling in the world to have this goal I set freshman year come true.”