Pressure kicks boost Zychlinski

Three weeks before national signing day, Daniel Zychlinski, who inked with Stanford on Wednesday, had only one Division I-A scholarship offer.

It came from Toledo.

But a trip to Las Vegas changed the King punter’s fortunes.

In January, Zychlinski flew to sin city with his father so he could perform at an elite kicking combine before dozens of Division I-A coaches. To say the least, he did quite well. After a strong showing, offers poured in from schools such as Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico, UNLV, Rice and Stanford.

“I actually got a few offers on the spot,” Zychlinski said. “It was probably the best performance of my life. All the coaches there came up and wanted my information. Some of them said I was the best guy there.

The trip wasn’t cheap.

And had Zychlinski bombed, he might have come back empty-handed.

“There’s a lot of stress because you have to perform when it counts,” Zychlinski said.

Because he did just that, Zychlinski earned a full ride to Stanford, which is worth about $49,000 per year. Even if Zychlinski hadn’t earned an athletic scholarship, he probably would have been okay. That’s because he carries a 5.9 weighted GPA.

-- KEITH NIEBUHR

Comments

[CDC-tampa]

We would first like to congratulate Daniel on this major accomplishment, well deserved! As a parent of two potential D-1 athletes also in the IB program I will tell you this is the absolute hardest thing to do! Keeping up with the work load, constant studying and service hours associated with this program while still trying to practice, practice, practice to work on your game is next to impossible in this program. Look long and hard at how many very good athletes come out of IB and are able to play D-1 anything…….few and far between! What typically happens is the student chooses academics over sports (as our two children did) because that will take them further in life. What Daniel did was the perfect combination and no easy task. Congratulations again!