PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL PRONZATO
Nick Visco claimed the state record for extra-point kicking percentage (192 out of 200, a 96 percent clip).
By Mike Gibson
For the Wire
For the past few years, fans of Temple University’s football team have cringed when Brandon McManus tried to make a tackle.
McManus, who recently signed a contract with the Indianapolis Colts, was the Owls’ only accomplished kicker and punter. If he went down, they would have to scramble.
By a minor miracle, McManus survived all four years uninjured. Now, Temple fans are resting relatively easy for a couple of reasons. One is that Archbishop Wood’s Nick Visco is in the fold and due to report to school on July 6. The other is that the Owls signed another talented kicker, Jim Cooper, Jr. of Mainland, N.J.
On paper, at least, a valid argument can be made that Visco is more accomplished coming out of high school than McManus was.
High school football has been played on an organized basis in the Philadelphia area since 1912, when the Public League started, followed shortly after by the Catholic and Inter-Ac League. Kicking records have been kept during all of those years.
Visco will take all but one of those with him when he competes for the kicking job at Temple this fall. He finished his high school career with 326 points, not just the most in those three leagues, but in the state of Pennsylvania. He also owns the state record for extra-point kicking percentage (192 out of 200, a 96 percent clip).
The other one, most field goals career, eluded him because the last two years of his career coincided with an era of unprecedented success at the Warminster school. The Vikings won the state title in 2011 and finished second in the state in 2012. Visco finished with “only” 22 career field goals.
While other teams were kicking field goals, the Vikings were scoring touchdowns and someone had to kick the extra points. It just so happened that Visco was very good at it.
“We were very successful, so that (not breaking the field goal record) was good in a way, because we were scoring touchdowns,” Visco said. “I enjoyed high school so much and the success that we had on the field made it that much more enjoyable. I attribute a lot of my success to the team around me.”
Visco gave a lot of credit to coach Steve Devlin, an Archbishop Ryan graduate, and to assistant Mike Carey, a Central Bucks West graduate, for a lot of the Vikings’ success.
“Coach Carey, he brings the fire to the team and made us a lot better and coach Devlin, I love coach Devlin, he made me feel so welcome and comfortable and he’s just a great guy,” Visco said.
Visco fell into the role of kicker as a seventh grader.
“I played soccer but I became bored with soccer,” Visco said. “When I started playing [football] at Northampton, coach [Bill] Fleming, asked if there was anybody who could kick and I stayed back. Then he asked again if anybody had any interest at all in it and I stepped forward.
“I guess because of my soccer background, I was good at it and just worked at it and got better.”
Soccer was how McManus started at North Penn, too.
“I talked to him multiple times and met him a couple of times at kicking camps,” he said. “Seeing him kick at Temple and kick in a professional stadium and now living out his dream is an inspiration.”
Visco knows that Cooper comes in as a favorite to win the job, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to back off.
“It’s going to be a competition either way,” he said. “I mean, he’s on scholarship and I’m not, and right now I’m putting myself in the best position to be ready when I get to Temple.
“I’m out there three, four days a week, finding a field I can kick at and getting someone to come out and [take a] video [of] me.”
Visco describes his strengths as his consistency in the place-kicking game and kickoffs and said that he’s got to work a little on his punting.
“I handled it the first six weeks of the season,” Visco said of punting, “but then I hurt my back running around in practice and the coach wouldn’t allow me to punt after that.”
Visco plans to major in business at Temple’s Fox School.
When not in a classroom, he’s all business on the football field.
“Coach Devlin was all for me making tackles in games, not in practices,” Visco said. “I expect it’s going to be the same at Temple.”
If he has the same kind of health and luck McManus had, Temple fans should keep smiling when the team lines up to kick.
