Ex-OSU kicker knows pain Brotzman feels

When Kyle Brotzman’s field-goal attempt sailed wide right, and then wide left, and Boise State fans’ once wide smiles faded to oblivion, a few different reactions emerged.

Some wanted to reenact the missed kicks but replace the ball with Brotzman’s head. Some were so overcome with sympathy that they wrote Brotzman letters or created supportive Internet pages.

And then there was Alexis Serna, who likely thought this: “Hey, at least they were field goals and not extra points — and at least Kyle didn’t miss three of them.”

The former Oregon State kicker was watching last Friday when Brotzman botched the 26-yarder at the end of regulation and the 29-yarder in overtime, witnessing Nevada beat Boise and end its national title hopes in front of the whole country.

Serna couldn’t help but be reminded, then more than ever, of that first game of the 2004 season against third-ranked Louisiana State, when he flubbed not one, not two, but three point after attempts in a one-point, nationally-televised loss.

“That was the first time I had feelings of LSU. Just going on Facebook and seeing what people were commenting and posting on their walls. It brought me back to the tons of negative e-mails that I got,” said Serna, now living in Corvallis. “That’s when I really started feeling bad for Kyle. I don’t feel like there’s any other kicker but me that’s done what he has done.”

Kickers are already the smallest players on the field, but a publicized miss can make them feel downright infinitesimal. And when you compound that melancholy with a deluge of berating e-mails, just getting out of bed can be as tough as nailing a 60-yarder.

Serna would hear them all.

“You should be embarrassed.”

“You’ll never kick a football ever again.”

“You should try to kill yourself, but you’d probably miss.”

And he won’t lie, it got to him.

“One of the things I’ve learned is that you can affect people by words. You can make people feel bad,” Serna said. “I wondered why would or how anybody could say that kind of stuff.”

That’s what he’d tell his anonymous critics when he wrote them back. He’d ask them what would possess them to assail someone like that. That he was as just a 19-year-old playing a game and that “I don’t take it as seriously you do. I hope you can can go on having a good day trying to put down someone 19 years old.”

And in his haters’ minds, that’s when he’d transform from an idea to a human being. They’d write back emotionally and apologetically, cursing themselves for being so cruel. This helped. But not as much as the letters. Not even close.

The day after the infamous trio of misses, Serna was chatting with his old kicking coach, Hugo Castellanos, who told him that his problems paled in comparison to someone fighting a debilitating disease. And sure enough, the next day Serna received a hand-written letter from a 12-year-old cancer patient named Austan Pierce, telling him virtually the same thing.

The note lent much-needed perspective and forged a friendship between he and Serna that still exists today, but there were other gestures as well — such as a letter saying “Always keep your head up, except when kicking” and a lottery scratcher ticket with an accompanying note reading “maybe your luck will change.”

“I never scratched it,” Serna said laughing. “I was afraid it would be an NCAA violation.”

His luck did change, though. After sitting out the next game — against Boise State, coincidentally — Serna reclaimed the kickoff job a week later and the placekicking job a week after that. He prayed his first kick wouldn’t be an extra point — which it wasn’t — just a field goal he drilled to put away New Mexico.

A year later he won the Lou Groza award, given to the nation’s top kicker. His 144 consecutive extra points, meanwhile, is a Pac-10 record. And despite being cut by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in August after two years in the Canadian Football League, Serna is still eyeing a career in the NFL.

Are you glad that LSU game happened? Serna was asked Wednesday.

“Oh yeah,” Serna said. “Because of the LSU situation, a lot of positive things have come. I don’t think I win the Groza without it, and when I was missing kicks during my first year up in Winnipeg, I was like ‘I’ve been through this. I’m not going to give up.’ If LSU doesn’t happen, I don’t know if I’m so focused on extra points that I get the record. How many people can say they set the record for consecutive misses and consecutive makes? It’s going to help me with my career path, because I feel like if I could get through that, I can get through anything. Now, I know I can always persevere. And if another kicker is struggling, someone can tell my story.”

Do you have any advice for Brotzman?

“The biggest thing is that it’s just a game,” said Serna, adding that Kyle shouldn’t sulk and give the media anything to write about. “And we (kickers) are not the reason we lost the game, we just contribute. That’s basically what it is, but everybody’s going to blame us. Kyle just has to know that he can go out and do it. The missed kick? It happened. We’re not perfect. It wouldn’t be that fun of a game if we were perfect.”

Between training sessions these days, the recently-engaged Serna works as a roofer and a car-dealership lot attendant. He also holds a fundraising position within the Oregon State athletic department and will be at Reser Stadium for Saturday’s Civil war between the Beavers and Oregon.

Who are you picking?

“I gotta go with the Beavers,” Serna said. “I can’t handle another loss.”

How’s it going to happen?

“Game-winning field goal.”

Matt Calkins is a sports writer for The Columbian. He can be contacted at 360-735-4528 or matt.calkins@columbian.com