The Punting Parson

To a small band of devoted men, the mass game of modern football is still, at its best, the skill of one individual practicing the ancient and fundamental art of the sport: kicking the ball. No man in the nation knows more about this art than a husky, hustling Episcopal priest named Arnold A. Fenton, 55, chaplain at New York Military Academy in upstate Cornwall, who has developed some of the game's finest punters.

"The punt isn't just a last-ditch defensive play," argues Father Fenton. "It's an offensive weapon. A good quick kick puts a team on its heels, and you're likely to get the ball back right away on a fumble or a blocked punt. Same way with a 'coffin-corner kick' [a kick that goes out of bounds within the 10-yd. line]. They're both fine short-term investments. You'll get that ball back with interest."

Ballet for Balance. Arnold Fenton has long practiced what he preaches; as a four-year-old, he booted drop kicks over his mother's clothesline in Metuchen, N.J. By the time he hit the University of Pennsylvania in 1922, he could drill a drop kick through the uprights from 45 yds. out. But as a Penn sophomore, Fenton suffered a concussion in an early scrimmage. He never played again. "When I got clobbered like that," he explains, "I turned to kicking as compensation."

Ordained in 1927, Fenton continued to develop his kicking techniques. In 1934 he started to pass on his knowledge to boys of his parish in Ansonia, Conn, and later in Mamaroneck, N.Y. As his fame spread, he was taken on as kicking consultant by colleges from Harvard to North Carolina. His most famous pupil: North Carolina's All-American Charlie Justice, one of the game's finest quick-kickers.

Along with "ChooChoo" Justice, some 350 other college punters have w'orked for hours at special exercises (including one similar to the ballet dancer's tour en I'air) to achieve Fenton's No. 1 fundamental: balance. "If a punter is balanced, he'll be accurate," says Father Fenton. Fenton strives for the accurate spiral that rolls for extra yardage, schools his punters to aim for coffin corner from as far out as 55 yds. A Fenton-trained kicker gauges the wind like an old salt, will boot low against it, high with it. The best ones can even tack the ball into a wind angling up the field to get a few added yards. One other Fenton law: ignore charging linemen. Says he: "It's better to risk a blocked kick than to take your eye off the ball."

Last week Arnold Fenton went to Palmer Stadium to watch Princeton drub Dartmouth for the Ivy League championship (see above) and to keep a teacher's eye on Prize Pupil Bill Gundy. Dartmouth's punter, who worked with him for two long months last summer. Fenton had drilled the erratic Gundy on his coordination, changed him into one of the best punters in the East this fall. In the debacle. Gundy still managed to out-punt Princeton by seven yards a try. "When one of my boys like Bill gets off a good one." chuckled Father Fenton. "I don't care if the congregation is big the next Sunday or not."

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