For college football players with an eye on a pro career, the time between the Senior Bowl, the final game showcase for seniors played on Jan. 27, and the NFL draft on April 26-28, is a nervous time.
And, for one in particular, the four-year starting punter for national champion Alabama Crimson Tide, JK Scott, his connection to Lima is far closer than the 505 miles that separate Lima and Tuscaloosa’s Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Scott, the All-American and two-time finalist for the Ray Guy Award, named for the only punter inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, happens to be the nephew of Lima residents Ruth and John Huffman.
While Lima certainly has produced its share of athletes, especially in football, with the likes of St. Rose’s Bill Lange, South’s Joe Morrison, Lima Senior’s Randy Cooper and William White and LCC’s Jim Lynch once dotting the rosters of NFL teams, there are also those who are connected to Lima by way of six degrees of separation. For J.K. Scott, it really only takes a couple of links in the six-degree chain to connect the Huffmans to one of the nation’s best kicking specialists.
Before JK’s future uncle, John Huffman, caught the eye of Crestview High School graduate Ruth, she was a Schuler, one of six children of Bob, a Lutheran minister, and Barb, who raised their half dozen progeny with the Biblical names of Martha, Mary, Ruth, Paul, David and John amidst the fertile farmlands between Van Wert and the Indiana-Ohio line.
Mary, whose talents lay far from the arenas of sports while in high school, according to her sister Ruth, would go on to marry Kim Scott, whose athletic abilities were so well cultivated that he’s a former two-time All-American pole vaulter at the University of Wisconsin.
As the Schuler children scattered, Mary wound up in Colorado, where she and Kim raised three children- Christi; John Kimball, who answers to JK; and Charlie- in Englewood, a Denver suburb not far from the majestic 1,400-plus-feet summits of the Collegiate Peaks of Mounts Harvard, Princeton and Yale.
Recalls Ruth, “My sister and Kim really didn’t do much traveling when the kids were growing up, except when Kim was traveling for business as a land developer. Mary was a stay-at-home mom. I really got to know Christi, JK and Charley much better after they graduated from high school.”
To say that Mary and Kim’s children are overachievers might be as big an understatement as saying the Coloradoan landscape is a tad hilly.
The eldest Scott, Christi, an all-state selection as a sprinter in high school as well as a classically trained pianist, ran track at Harvard and graduated with a degree in biomedical engineering and is currently headed for medical school. The youngest, Charlie, is the family’s second punter, having just completed his sophomore season punting for the Air Force Academy.
As for the Scott’s middle child, JK, the Alabama punter since the moment he stepped on campus in the fall of 2014 after graduating high school as a five-star recruit and selecting Alabama over Notre Dame, Colorado and Arizona, his success as one of the nation’s best punters was foreshadowed when his very first game kick for Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide against West Virginia traveled 62 yards, burying the Mountaineers inside their own ten-yard line. Perhaps it was fitting that the punter from Colorado, the Spanish word for red, would wear the crimson jersey of Alabama.
Buckeye fans may remember Scott in the Sugar Bowl against Ohio State almost as much as the electrifying runs of Zeke Elliott that contributed so heavily to the last Buckeye national championship in January of 2015.
Recalls John Huffman about his nephew’s performance, one in which Scott averaged 55 yards on seven punts, including deftly dropping four inside the Buckeye ten-yard line, “I remember my buddy Ron Williams calling me during the game and telling me he’d never watched a big game before where he felt a punter was the MVP, but, had Alabama won, he would have been his choice.”
Over four years, for JK, there have been two national titles and three All-American selections and an acknowledgment from arguably college football’s greatest coach ever, Saban, who has frequently called Scott “a tireless worker.”
Scott, a placekicker as well as a punter in high school, continued to practice both skills while at Alabama and handled kickoff duties as well as long field goals because of the power in his right leg. He also was the holder on field goals and extra points. When an injury to the regular placekicker occurred before JK’s last home game this past season at Bryant-Denny versus Mercer, Scott stepped in and got plenty of work. In the game, he kicked off nine times, punted three more and was a perfect eight for eight in extra points.
Ruth speaks as to how helpful her brother-in-law Kim has been in training all three of his kids to become successful collegiate athletes.
“Really Kim, with his background in track and field, knows so much about training methods, and I think that influence can be seen in what Chrsti, JK and Charlie have accomplished.”
For JK, planning for success in an organized fashion has been vital. Before each season he plans out his weekly training schedule, one in which, to prevent leg fatigue, does not include punting every day. While three days a week, he’ll typically punt between sixty and eighty balls, the rest of the schedule will include a lot of cross training, such as sprint workouts suggested by his sister, running in the pool, weight lifting and Pilates.
Over his four years, John and Ruth Huffman have attended several games both in Tuscaloosa and away games, and after games they’ve witnessed a side of their 6’5”, 207-pound nephew with the long blond hair, a side that speaks powerfully as to his priorities.
Recalls John, “This is a kid who is very faith-based. He sees his ultimate career path as that of a youth minister. I remember after the Mississippi State game his junior year, he was coming out of the locker room and saw a boy in a wheelchair, who, it was pretty obvious, had some type of muscular degenerative disease.
“Before he even came up to greet us, he went straight to the wheelchair and knelt down in front of the boy and went forehead-to-forehead and probably talked to him for five full minutes. When one of JK’s teammates emerged, JK called him over and he knelt down as well, and they joined hands and prayed. You should have seen the look on that mother’s face.”
Huffman went on to recall a moment after this year’s Tennessee game in Knoxville when JK was coming out of the locker room and ten or so young boys rushed for his autograph. Scott agreed to sign but only if the boys agreed to join hands with him to pray.
“It was pretty remarkable watching that. After the prayer, JK signed for every one of them.”
Lately, life has been a whirlwind for JK Scott. He graduated early as a business major in December, won a national championship in early January and, the weekend after the title game, married his fiancée, Sydney, a former Crimson Tide cheerleader. At the same time, Scott is intensifying his training for the upcoming NFL combine in March, in addition to selecting along with his father’s help, an agent
The Scotts’ lifestyle, between traveling to JK’s and Charlie’s games and Kim’s increased business travels, bear little resemblance to the family that rarely left the Denver area during the children-rearing years.
Jokes Ruth about her sister and family, “They treat planes nowadays the way John and I do cars!”
As for JK’s draft prospects, history has proven over time since the first pro football draft in 1936 how rare it has been for teams to use a pick on either a placekicker or punter. It wouldn’t be until 1954, when Tulsa placekicker Tom Miner was selected by the Steelers that either would be selected. And, it would take until 1960 until a punter was, two actually, in the AFL draft when Paul Maguire was selected by the Chargers and Bobby Joe Green by the Broncos. In all only 129 punters have ever been drafted over 81 years, with none selected in last year’s draft.
Nonetheless, for Lima’s Ruth and John Huffman, their hope is the odds of JK Scott being drafted aren’t nearly as long as that 73-yarder he boomed against those Buckeyes in that 2015 Sugar Bowl.
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