Blue White Illustrated

ON THE UPSWING After finishing strong in 2012, Sam Ficken looks to maintain his pace | A s much as anybody, Sam Ficken was responsible for the upbeat mood that infused the Penn State football program heading into its longer-than-usual offseason. The skinny place-kicker from Indiana made a 37-yard field goal in overtime last November that helped Penn State stun Wisconsin, the Big Ten's eventual Rose Bowl representative, 24-21. It was the Nittany Lions' last game of the season, and it was a great one, leaving the team with a sense of accomplishment and a belief that it will be able to persevere through whatever its opponents and the NCAA dish out in the future. And if the victory lifted the spirits of the program and its supporters, it did the same for Ficken himself. "I like to remember that game. It was one of the best points of my career," he said this spring. "Running onto the field [after the game] – I'll remember that forever. Sending those seniors off like that against a team that went to the Rose Bowl – that's special. "But at the same time, I can't be complacent with my kicking ability. I was 3 for 3 in that game, and ending on a high note really gives me motivation to continue that throughout my career." Ficken finished his sophomore season as Penn State's leading scorer with 81 points. He made 39 of 41 PATs and 14 of 21 field goals, respectable numbers that seem even more praiseworthy when you stop to consider that Ficken began the season by converting only two of his first eight field goal attempts. After his 1for-5 outing at Virginia in week two, which included a botched PAT, Penn State seemed desperately in need of a reliable kicker. It held open tryouts in September, and there was much speculation among fans and media about whether Bill O'Brien would be able to scrounge up a potential replacement. Was there a former high school standout among the 39,000 undergraduates enrolled at University Park? A soccer player with an itch to try football? An IM football star? But it turned out that Penn State already had a reliable kicker on its roster. And as Ficken looks ahead to his junior season, those early struggles couldn't seem less relevant. He has been on a roll since making a 27-yarder in the third quarter of Penn State's loss to Ohio State last October – it was the first of 10 consecutive makes to finish the season – and he is looking to main- tain his momentum as he gets ready for the fall. "My mind-set is that you're supposed to make every kick in the game," Ficken said. "That's my job, and it really was my mind-set at the end of last year. I went to a banquet after the Nebraska game [in November], and I said that my goal was to not miss another kick the rest of the year. That's what happened, and it's easy to build

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