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Central York Kicker Matthew Parker sets a State record with 54 yard free kick.

Tagged under: District 3, Gameday Hub, News

| October 28, 2023

**this was originally reported as a national record. We were informed a hs kicker in Kentucky hit a 60 yard free kick. This is still a PA state record.”

 

Last night in York the Central York Panthers were facing a dilemma. York High had to punt the ball and the Panthers had  only 17 seconds left in the half with a 27-0 lead. Central York head coach Gerry Yonchiuk reached into the oldest bag of tricks he could find, pulled out a play, then sent out a kicking T and Matthew Parker to attempt what is almost never even thought of let alone done. Parker hit a 54 yard free kick. Called a “fair catch kick” in the NFL.

“We had talked about it before. We started talking about it in the summer” said Yonchiuk. “We said we’re going to do it if we had the chance this year. Last week Martin Parker (Matthew’s dad) sent me a clip of a 30 something yard one from in the country somewhere. Dan Hagerman, who is our AD and was a kicker at Lock Haven, he works with Matthew on the side and was standing there on the sidelines last night and York High had to punt. There was like 17 seconds left in the half and I looked and him and said “we’re going to do this” He gave me the thumbs up so I waited till like 7 seconds and called a time out. They probably figured we were going for a block, and we were, but I told the guys “hey, we gotta fair catch this thing”.  I think we fooled the whole stadium. It took the officials 5 minutes to get it all set up. Nobody knew how to do it. All they had is what we told them. The kid has a leg. He’s kicking everything not just into the endzone, it goes out”.

Matthew Parker’s reaction to Yonchiuk calling the play was  “I was like, we are actually doing this? As long as it goes through the uprights is all I cared about”. His reaction to breaking a national record? A simple “that’s sweet!”

Called a “fair catch kick” in the NFL, the fair catch kick is a rule at the professional and high school levels of American football that allows a team that has just made a fair catch to attempt a free kick[A] from the spot of the catch. The kick must be either a place kick or a drop kick, and if it passes over the crossbar and between the goalposts of the opposing team’s goal, a field goal, worth three points, is awarded to the kicking team. The last successful attempt was made in 1976 by Ray Wersching of the San Diego Chargers (45 yards), and the longest successful attempt was made in 1964 by Paul Hornung of the Green Bay Packers (52 yards).

PFN searched newspapers.com, NFL databases and more for over 2 hours to determine the record. Should anyone claim one longer, we will rescind our claim to it being a national record.

 

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