‘I call him Legatron’: Ty Zenter shining as both kicker and punter for Kansas State

The more you watch Ty Zentner do his thing on field goals, kickoffs and punts for Kansas State the more you think he has been hammering footballs with his right foot since the moment he learned to walk.

But that is not at all the case. Believe it or not, Zentner is still relatively new to the sport of football. He didn’t attempt his first field goal until his senior year of high school. Before that, he was a goalkeeper on the soccer pitch.

“I just learned that he only began playing football something like five years ago,” K-State running back Deuce Vaughn said. “That is unbelievable. I call him Legatron because he absolutely destroys the ball every time he kicks it. The way that he is playing right now is helping us win football games.”

Zenter, a 6-foot-2 “super senior” from Topeka, has certainly been making an impact for the Wildcats lately on special teams. He is truly doing it all. Take a look at K-State’s depth chart and you will find him listed as the starting kicker, kickoff specialist and punter. Elite quarterbacks are often referred to as the face of their team. Well, Zentner is the foot of K-State football.

He is averaging 63.1 yards on kickoffs, 44.6 yards on punts and he is a perfect 8 for 8 on field goals, splitting the uprights from as far away as 53 yards.

“He’s flipping the field for us,” Vaughn said. “He’s putting punts in the air that are hard to catch. He’s kicking it off through the end zone, and when he’s not getting us touchbacks he kicks it to the one and it bounces straight up and their guy has to pick it up and he’s getting tackled near the goal line. He’s doing unbelievable things for his football team.”

Zentner was arguably at his best last weekend when he boomed a punt 72 yards against the Jayhawks and scored nine points as a kicker.

“Ty is an absolute stud,” K-State football coach Chris Klieman said. “He keeps getting better and better and getting stronger and stronger as the season goes on.”

Funny thing about that is he wasn’t always a special teams maven. Chris Tennant handled field goals at the start of this season and other punters have started over him in the past.

Zentner started out this season as the team’s punter and kickoff specialist. It wasn’t until late October that Klieman also put his trust in him on field goals. That turned out to be a good strategy. The more responsibilities Zenter has on special teams, the better he seems to play.

“He wants that pressure,” Klieman said. “He wants that extra responsibility. He’s such a competitor. He competes in the winter conditioning and summer conditioning against all the all the other guys as well as anybody, because he’s a really good athlete. Watch him on kickoffs, and he’s in the mix. He’s hoping it pops so he can make a tackle, because he just likes doing that stuff.”

So how did Zentner make the transition away from soccer to football?

That is a long story that he is happy to share. Zentner says he was content to play soccer in college until his senior year of high school. In fact, he committed to play for Barton Community College, but he had some friends on the Shawnee Heights football team who convinced him to give kicking and punting a try.

He split time between football and soccer that year, but one of his coaches thought he had the talent to make it as a college kicker. That coach pushed Zentner all season and then arranged for coaches at Butler Community College to give him a look. They were impressed and offered a football scholarship.

“The rest,” Zentner said, “is history.”

Zentner spent the next two seasons kicking and punting for Butler. Then he moved up to K-State, starting off as a kickoff specialist and slowly adding more responsibilities until he was doing it all.

“It’s just awesome,” Zentner said, “how I didn’t pick up a football until my senior year and then went to a Kansas juco and ended up here. It’s the greatest place on earth.”