Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — Ryon Sayeri positioned himself behind a tee, this dance perfectly choreographed by now. Once and twice and thrice, the USC commit slid to his left, his left leg locking, his face an immovable mass of stone. Once and twice and thrice, he strode toward the football, his plant-leg curving upon itself, torquing and delivering another 40-yarder through the uprights at Chaminade High.

The afternoon rays scorched off the blue turf of his alma mater in the San Fernando Valley, threatening to melt another pair of Sayeri’s cleats. He stayed, engrossed in the same routine. After an hour, trainer Cole Murphy issued a challenge to his protégé.

“Five-ball scatter?” he asked Sayeri.

Sayeri nodded, expression unchanged.

Murphy, a former Syracuse kicker, took five footballs out of a bin, tossing them at various points across the field. One landed by the left hashes on the 20-yard line. One landed at midfield on the 30. One landed back at the 42. One by one, Sayeri set up a tee, slid to his left, strode and nailed each, finishing with a 57-yarder that split the pylons with a cushion to spare.

“He’s a gamer,” Murphy said while watching Sayeri kick, a kid needing little direction.

Come fall camp, USC’s kickers are set for perhaps the most quietly fascinating positional battle on the roster. The program converted just two-thirds of its field goals in 2023, ranking 109th in the country; head coach Lincoln Riley told reporters in early April that taking a step up at kicker had been “one of our big offseason goals.” In late April, USC nabbed Georgia Southern kicker Michael Lantz out of the portal, set to battle for the job with incumbents Denis Lynch and Tyler Robles.

Sayeri is the future, the first All-American selection in Chaminade program history. But he’s also trying to be the present. He had a handful of collegiate scholarships on the table this winter, with full rides from San Jose State and San Diego State, only to commit to USC as a preferred walk-on. The bet was simple, a quiet conviction: Sayeri believes, fully, that he’ll be Lincoln Riley’s kicker this fall.

Chaminade coach David Machuca would try to impart upon Sayeri in his recruitment: Dude, you have a scholarship to SDSU and San Jose. Why not go and start there, on scholarship, and then transfer to USC?

“I straight-up told him,” Sayeri said, “I have faith that I could go to any school in the nation and start automatically.”

‘Make sure you’re remembered’

Five years ago, Sayeri entered Chaminade as a scrawny 13-year-old soccer convert who had never played football. But his right leg hummed with confidence, and Machuca couldn’t help but notice.

At that time, Chaminade’s starting kicker was current Syracuse punter Jack Stonehouse. But Machuca, then an assistant at Chaminade, got in longtime coach Ed Croson’s ear.

“Hey,” Machuca remembered telling Croson, “I think the young guy’s better than him.”

“Nah,” Croson would hem, “he’s a freshman.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Machuca would counter, “he keeps making ’em.”

Five years later, Machuca and Sayeri walked into a USC spring practice in April, two months before Sayeri was set to move in. They chatted with Drew Fox, an assistant director of player personnel. They chatted with Zach Hanson, USC’s tight ends coach. They chatted with other staffers.

Machuca told them all the same thing: Sayeri was going to win the job as a freshman.

It happened before, Sayeri beating out Stonehouse that freshman year at Chaminade en route to a standout high school career. And those around Sayeri are fully convinced it’ll happen again at USC.

“He’s the kind of kid that you can plug-and-play,” Murphy said. “It’s kinda tough to find a lot of those kids.”

In sessions with Murphy, Sayeri trains with two GoPros positioned on either side of him, capturing a front-and-back angle of his swing. His plant leg has become almost double-jointed, seemingly bending backward to snap power into his swing. It’s built off a Murphy-ingrained philosophy of staying close to the ball, similar to the swing of legendary Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker.

Technique, however, is secondary to sheer mentality as a collegiate kicker. There is an edge, a steadiness as a performer, that some kids simply don’t have, Murphy said.

He’s sent plenty of trainees to see a sports psychologist. He’s never needed to send Sayeri.

“I’ve really never seen him get nervous before,” Murphy said.

Pressure, still, lingers in Sayeri’s mind entering USC. It was always a goal to play a sport in college. But Sayeri bet on himself in picking USC. And with a starting job hanging in the balance, and more importantly a scholarship, want has become need.

“There’s a lot of things he wants to achieve there,” Sayeri’s dad, Matt, said. “That’s our mindset, that’s my – like, when you’re going to go there, just make sure you’re remembered.”

“You’re not just some empty footsteps in a hallway.”

Gunning for the top job

Sayeri knows the competition will be fierce, particularly as USC’s incumbent is one of the most beloved faces on the roster.

In September, in the midst of his second year as USC’s starting kicker, Lynch was finally put on scholarship. When Riley announced the news to the team in the fall, they “erupted,” Riley remembered, requesting Lynch come up for a speech.

In the days to come, reporters asked members of the program exactly what Lynch said. Nobody was able to put it into words, Lynch was an unsolvable enigma, a kid whose go-to drink at Starbucks – as described by Murphy, who has also long worked with Lynch – is an iced chocolate milk.

“It was really bizarre,” Riley remembered, “and then at the end it was like, ‘And thank you,’ and walked off. That’s just Denis for you.”

Lynch, the dripped-out, milk-drinking favorite, is the “king of the hill” for USC’s job at the moment, as Murphy described. But USC’s staff, particularly special teams analyst Ryan Dougherty, has been clear to the faces in the room, Murphy said: To win the job, you have to separate yourself. In April, Dougherty told Sayeri he wanted all of USC’s kickers to be above 80% accuracy.

Sayeri’s entire mentality since has shifted in his workouts, suddenly keeping track of every single make or miss. If USC wanted 80%, Sayeri figured, he’d shoot for 90%.

“The coach made it clear, like, ‘We wanted change,’” Sayeri said. “Like, ‘We want to be a top specialist school.’ And I think we could do that, and that’s my goal.”

Lynch has been hit-or-miss on field goals for a couple of years, hovering around 70%, but has been solid on extra points. Incoming transfer Lantz nailed 23 of 28 tries (82.1%) last year at Georgia Southern. But Sayeri isn’t focusing on anyone but himself, he said, quietly leaning against a bench after his workout.

“I think, if I kick how I did today, any single day,” Sayeri said, “I don’t think there’s any doubt in my mind.”

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