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high, JV or varsity, and barely even any pick-up games. Instead, his primary athletic focus for most of his life had been soccer. He started when he was 5 years old, playing for the 8-and-under age group, and played throughout high school. During his final two seasons, he was not only one of the best players at St. Charles North, setting the school record with 25 goals as a junior, but also in the league, earning a Division I scholarship to play for Bradley. That's where he earned a starting spot as a true freshman and scored the golden goal in the 95th minute of his very first game. But he soon decided he wanted to try something new – brand new. So he lined up a transfer in order to walk on and kick for the Nittany Lions. Some might call it a leap of faith, others a head-scratcher. For Davis, it was simply the next pursuit in his athletic journey. During that first winter workout and spring practice, he often found himself feeling overwhelmed as he strived to fa- miliarize himself not only with his new teammates but also an entirely new sport. By the summer he had started to find his groove. By the Army game he had finally settled in. In fact, he finished that first season on a perfect note, hitting 8 of 8 field goal attempts, including a long kick of 42 yards, and 11 of 11 PATs. One hundred percent accuracy during his very first season on the gridiron. For Davis, it wasn't a total surprise. "I expect to make every kick," he said. "Looking back, it feels like I didn't take that many kicks, because I didn't." So he's not resting upon his laurels. No, far from it. "Next year is a new year, so I'm just looking at it kick by kick," he continued. "You can't remember the last kick and you can't look forward to any more. You just have to keep focused on the one you have." His scoring stat lines might have been exemplary – "Tyler Davis, I don't think probably gets enough credit," Franklin said – but Davis was still often reminded of the adjustments that he hadn't yet made, that this game was totally differ- ent from anything he had played before. "If you make a mistake, you can't just run and get the ball back," Davis laughed, recalling his soccer days. "This is pretty black-and-white." Kickoffs were especially difficult. He was perfect on PAT and field goal at- tempts, kicks on which the nose of the ball rested directly on the grass. But on kickoffs, the ball sat on a tee, and that proved more challenging. "I'd never really kicked a ball off the tee," he said, "so that was kind of an ad- justment for me." It's something that he focused on dur- ing the off-season in preparation for his second year. "I put a big emphasis on my kickoffs this summer," he said. In addition to the kicks themselves, Davis had to adjust to the grandiosity of the stage. During one of his first kickoff attempts in Beaver Stadium, he bent down to place the ball on the tee, and when he stood back up, he was greeted by a mirror image of himself on the big screen. "I was like, 'No way. Is this actu- ally real?,'" he said. "When I played soc- cer, there was never even close to a fan base even a tenth of this." Bradley is a popular soccer school. It routinely draws 1,000 or more fans to Shea Stadium for its biggest home games. "But nothing like this," Davis said, looking out toward an empty Beaver Stadium. "Not even close." – T.O. Koa Farmer, running backs Mark Allen and Miles Sanders, cornerbacks Grant Haley, Zech McPhearson and Nick Scott, and receivers DeAndre Thompkins and Chris Godwin. Each of those players has his own unique skill set, and special teams coor- dinator Charles Huff is using the presea- son to determine who gives him the best chance for not only ball security but "splash" plays. "If you look at last year, we had some opportunities," Huff said. "We've got to be able to make some big plays. A 58- yard return is great. I'm not upset about it, but when we get an opportunity to get a one-on-one with a kicker, we've got to be able to [score a touchdown]. Those are the things that Koa and the rest of that group going into the summer have been working on, and going into camp [those] are some of the things that we're stressing." Because they know, as Franklin empha- sized in his preseason press conference, "all options are open" for Penn State's re- turn game in 2016. ■ KICKING BACK Davis is looking to build on a debut season in which he hit 8 of 8 field goal at- tempts and 11 of 11 PATs. Unaccustomed to kick- ing off a tee, he was fo- cused throughout the off-season on improving his kickoffs. Photo by Steve Manuel

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