Pickens football coach on kicker Toccoa McGraw: ‘Nothing phases her’

She came out and did a really good job the very first time we let her kick, and so I sat down with her mom and dad and we talked about it and what it would look like. Obviously being a little different when, when I’m the father of the (female) kicker that I had a few years ago.

You have to make sure, hey, they want to make sure that she’s going to be taken care of, and she’s not going to get a hit and all of those things. She kind of really just hit the ground running and has done a phenomenal job learning on her own. Obviously being a high level soccer player that helps.”

TM: “I never even really thought about playing football. I was at (Parker’s daughter’s) birthday party and coach Bennett just happened to be there. I didn’t even know he was going to be the head coach or anything. He came up to me and he was like, ‘would you want to try out football anytime?’ and I was like, ‘No, I would never do that.’ And then about two weeks later, I came back and I was like, ‘Oh, that actually seems pretty cool. I think I’ll give it a try.’”

2. Coach Bennett, having coached your daughter and now having recruited another female kicker, what is your perspective on finding female athletes for this position?

CB: “You know, my daughter growing up around the sport, this being my 30th year coaching, she grew up at the fields and that was a whole different situation with he just wanting to come out and kick and her being a soccer player…. They’re both very talented at what they do. I think it’s just the allowing the opportunity. You know, as an older coach, you just grow and say, ‘Hey, look, we’ll give anybody an opportunity that can come out and do it and do the work,’ and they both did that. I have no idea about kicking, to be honest with you. I’ve never coached kickers in my entire career. My daughter would laugh, and she would probably tell you I just tell her to kick it really hard. That was my extent of coaching kickers. But just allowing the opportunity for those situations to occur because, I mean, we were in a situation at Cambridge where one of our kickers got really sick, another one didn’t play, so we had no kicker. And this year, we had a young man last season that did all of our kicking responsibilities. So, while we developed a younger one, she’s really good. She has earned everything she’s gotten and continues to step up and do whatever we ask her to do.”

3. Toccoa had a stellar performance last week. Was it expected? Did you know she was having a standout performance?

CB: “Last year we brought her into two different games early in the season when our other kicker cramped and she kicked two field goals last year, and she kicked some extra points. So we, we’ve known all along really nothing phases her. She doesn’t get nervous. She does, but she doesn’t show it. She knows her job, and she goes out and does her job, and she gets really frustrated when she doesn’t kick well. She’s just that type of competitor. You know, this summer, I think she had a 42-yarder. That’s really good at the high school level for any kicker, really. So we know, we’re going to trust her and we actually let her try to kick a 44-yarder in the Model scrimmage and the hold was bad, and I’m not going to blame the holder, but, she was very, very frustrated with herself, and that’s where you get the fact that she really doesn’t want to talk about how good she is or anything like that.”

TM: " I felt pretty good about my performance, but I felt better that my team performed well and we won, because I knew that that was something big to them.“

4. While having female kickers isn’t as uncommon these days, it still is unique. Do you see it as an opportunity for young female athletes to stand out? Do you see this as a role model opportunity

CB: “(Toccoa) didn’t do this to be like ‘I’m a girl doing this in a male sport,’ right? She just wanted to come be a part of it. It wasn’t about the glory, the glam… And the other side of that is, you know, I told both Toccoa and my daughter, when she first started wanting to do this, I said, ‘Listen, you are going to do every single thing those guys do. You’re not getting out of practice. You’re not getting out of stadiums. You’re not getting out of sprints. You’re not getting out of workouts. Because if you do, they will not respect you. And so you have to do every single thing they do.’”

TM: “I have talked to some of the younger girls that have tried playing football. There’s not many soccer girls that would like to try at our school, but there’s a couple younger girls in Pickens that are trying football, and I just try to give them advice and hype them up and encourage them.”