BURLINGTON — Al Bond remembers watching the crowd gather around Andrew Furney as he kept kicking field goal after field goal in Pullman this summer.

“It was like a storybook thing. It was really awesome,” the Burlington-Edison football team’s kicking coach recalled with a grin. “They sent him out to kick and we were the only ones on the field.

“You’d see one guy standing out there and he’s on his cell phone. Then there’s three standing up there. Pretty soon they’re down on the field and they’re on their cell phones. Pretty soon we have the whole coaching staff there. (Cougar head coach Paul) Wulff’s there. Pretty soon they’re calling their snapper and holder over. They have a camp with 500 kids over there, and the coaches are coming over to watch him.”

By the end of the performance, the coaching staff at Washington State had a pretty good idea of what Northwest Conference football fans have already seen for the past two years from Burlington-Edison’s senior kicker. And Furney had an idea of how the recruiting game for kickers is very difficult than for players at any other position.

The trip to Washington State was part of a busy summer that had Furney visiting kicking camps sponsored by universities around the country. In between he was taking part in auditions much like the one at Washington State.

His summer included an invitation to the University of Houston camp, a trip to a national camp in Chicago. After a quick trip to Iowa to visit a small school that had expressed interest in him, he drove to Columbus, Ohio to kick at Ohio State. He flew back for one day, stayed in Sea-Tac, then flew the next morning to a two-day camp at Stanford.

About a week later, he and Bond drove to Pullman for the Washington State tryout, and kicked for the University of Washington.

All of that was in June.

“I’ve never had anyone kick as well as him, reason being I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody as dedicated as him,” Tigers head coach Bruce Shearer said. “No one has put in that much time at that many camps to be that good.”

Later in the summer he went to an instructional camp, then a trip to Whitewater, Wis., to kick at the Kohl’s National Invitational Scholarship Camp. Kohl’s gives him a 4 1/2 -star ranking and lists him 52nd in the nation for the class of 2010. He is the highest ranked kicker from the state of Washington. In most of the other camps he was among the top five kickers.

“The big thing is getting your name out there, getting exposure,” Furney said. “It’s kind of hard being up in Washington. If you research the top kickers in the country and a lot of the kickers that go on to play in college, a lot of them are from warmer climates. There are some kickers that come out of harsher weather states, but the majority come out of California, Texas and states like that.”

Furney started out as a C Team tight end his freshman year. He had soccer experience, but hadn’t given any thought to being a kicker. He lost his spot when he sprained an ankle and sat on the bench. The C Team kicker didn’t show up one day, and they let Furney kick to practice special teams.

“They liked what they saw,” Furney said. “That was the year Marcos Vega was a senior, so who was going kick next year was kind of up in the air. It just kind of worked out that I got the role over the summer and got to kick a lot of the summer.”

He also has changed the way his head coach approaches games.

“I tell my offense, ‘You have three plays to get a first down or we’ll kick it,’” Shearer said. “That says quite a bit about the confidence you have in a kicker. A lot of coaches, it will be fourth-and-1 on the 10, they’ll go for it. Not me. We’re kicking it. We’re going to get three points.”

What all Furney’s success and accolades haven’t translated into, yet, is an offer of a college scholarship, a fact that speaks less about his talent than the unique process by which kickers get recruited.

Colleges have a limited number of scholarships, and are reluctant to use more than one at a time for placekickers. While a school might bring in multiple backs and linemen each year, they may only bring on a kicker every few years.

After his impressive display at Washington State, the Cougar coaching staff told Furney, if he got other scholarship offers, to call them back before making a final decision. Eastern Washington told him they were interested, but wanted to talk to him later in the year.

“It’s kind of hard to see who’s really interested in me,” Furney said. “At the camps, they talk about recruiting for our position because it’s rare. Three weeks before signing day, there will be this school that goes, ‘Hey, we like you,’ and they’ve never talked to you before.

“It’s frustrating, but at the same time, I’m keeping a positive mind. I know there’s a lot of time left, and a lot can happen, and schools are talking to me.”

Right now his focus is on helping the 2-0 Tigers. He has two field goals, including a 45-yarder, and is 12-for-12 in extra points. He’s not happy with his kickoff thus far, but by most high school standards those would be strong as well.

So he’s spent the week working on kickoffs. He’s also concentrating on punting this year, trying to match his all-state status as a kicker.

“It’s almost like an addicting thing,” Furney said of practice. “You want to get better and you want to set the bar high. D-I would be a dream of mine, but playing college in general would be a dream.”
“It’s going to pay off in the long run,” Bond said. “He’s going to get a scholarship.”

• Eric Francis can be reached at 360-416-2131 or by e-mail at