By Billy Watkins
Lucas Carneiro had a dream since he was a kid to play college soccer and, hopefully, beyond. He had a thunder right leg and loved the game.
His parents, Jackson and Maren, had other ideas.
“My parents always wanted me to play other sports growing up just to experience them,” Carneiro said this week by phone. “My freshman year of high school, they really wanted me to kick for the football team, but I got myself out of that.
“But my sophomore year, my mom said, ‘Nope. Nope. Not again.’ She showed up at school with my cleats. I tried out, made the team and I haven’t looked back. By my senior year, I decided to give this football thing a try.”
The current beneficiary of that decision — and mom’s vision — is No. 13 Ole Miss, which signed Carneiro out of the transfer portal last winter.
He was named co-winner of the SEC Special Teams Player of the Week award after making field goals of 28, 36 and 43 yards and all three extra-point tries in the Rebels’ 30-23 victory over Kentucky last Saturday.
It was his first SEC game, first road game with his new team. He played before 58,346 fans — or more than three times the size of the usual crowd at Western Kentucky. And his performance was just two-and-a-half hours away from his former campus.
The win pushed Ole Miss to 2-0 with a 6 p.m matchup with Arkansas set for Saturday in Oxford.
Carneiro’s only miss was his first attempt — a 51-yarder that hit the left upright. It was his only errant kick from 50 yards or more in seven career tries.
His final kick of the day put the Rebels up two scores with 3:01 left in the game, something head coach Lane Kiffin mentioned several times postgame to the media.
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A 5-11, 195-pound junior from Cornelius, N.C., Carneiro is not afraid of the big moment. He nailed a 50-yard field goal with three seconds remaining last year to give Western Kentucky a 19-17 victory and a trip to the Conference USA championship game.
“I want those 50-yard plus kicks every single time,” he said. “I think most good kickers do. That’s just the competitive part of it.
“When I missed that first kick (at Kentucky), I was like ‘Dang it!’ But I knew it was time to forget about it and move on because I was going to be called on again and I couldn’t let the miss affect me.”
His only thoughts just before an attempt: “Good swing, good contact.” He is so in tune with his body that he can usually tell if the kick is good or wayward just by the sound of the ball off his foot.
He aims his foot just below the center of the football. “When I do miss I can tell right there in the moment what I did wrong. My swing might have been a little different or I was a little late to lock (his ankle and knee). That’s when I remind myself just to go back to basics.”
In two years at Western Kentucky, he made 87 percent of field goal attemtps. Last year he made 18 of 19 and all 41 extra-point attempts. He finished as a semifinalist for the Lou Groza Award, given to the nation’s top kicker.
In the SEC, where points come hard-earned, a solid field goal kicker is crucial to the cause. Before he ever tried a kick for Ole Miss, he had already been named preseason All-SEC and All-American.
“That was surreal to find out about that,” Carneiro said. “At the end of the day, I appreciate those awards and I’d like to win them. I’ll write them down. But I can’t think about them much because it will distract me from what I’m supposed to be doing in the moment.”
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I found it strange that a kicker of his ability received only three scholarship offers.
“Western Kentucky, Colorado and Arizona,” he reels them off. “The last two were just too far away. I was thankful for Western Kentucky wanting me.
“My mind was so set on soccer, I think I was just late to the game of recruiting — going to camps, getting in front of coaches,” he said. “But it’s worked out.”
He has a new goal: Become a kicker in the NFL.
“That’s why I picked Ole Miss out of the portal,” he said. “I think they can help get me there.” He likes the weight program that has made him stronger. He likes the way the kicking period of practice is structured to provide him a game-like feel.
And what about his new home, Vaught-Hemingway Stadium? How does it suit a kicker?
“The wind is definitely a little weird,” he said. “It spirals in there and almost right at the 50-yard line, the wind splits. It blows one way on one side of the 50 and the other way on the other side of the 50.
“But I think it’s an awesome stadium. The atmosphere was surreal during the opener (against Georgia State). I can’t wait to experience an SEC game there this Saturday. Pretty sure it’s going to be crazy.”
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