KANSAS, Ohio — Brandon Leal was never going to play football.
His focus was always on his club soccer team, until one day in eighth grade. Lakota High School head football coach Mike Lento pulled him out of class to kick a field goal. The coach wanted to see if his skills on the pitch would translate to the gridiron.
"We pulled him out there and he kicked the football in his eighth-grade year, and we're like 'you're in' just by hearing it," Lento said of the sound of Leal's foot hitting the ball.
Now a junior, Leal recently showed off his kicking skills in a way few others can. At the end of the first half of last week's game versus Margaretta, the Raiders decided to send out the field goal unit. It would be a 56-yard attempt.
"Who wouldn't want to hit a 56?" Leal asked. "I knew I could do it."
Lento said corralling his players was a challenge in its own right.
"I called a timeout with three seconds left, and our running back who's our holder comes over, and he's just vomiting all over the place," Lento said. "I'm like 'you need to go [hold] it. I need three seconds buddy, and get it done.'"
With three seconds left in the first half, Leal kicked it 56 yards just over the crossbar to put Lakota on the board for the first time that evening. Leal became one of only 13 kickers in Ohio high school football history to make a field goal from 56 yards or longer.
"I couldn't believe it because, if you look at the videos, I barely celebrated because I could not believe that I made that," Leal said.
Lento says the video of Leal's kick got a few colleges' attention, and he wouldn't be surprised to see him play at the next level.
"There's a couple coaches that reached out to me and said 'hey, is he offered anywhere?' So we'll play it out, he's gonna do his ACTs and SATs and continue to get better," Lento said.
For a former soccer player, the idea of playing college football is an exciting one.
"I would love to play in college," Leal said. "Who wouldn't want to play college ball?"