The teammates took it out the night before Syracuse played at Louisiana State. From deep inside senior kicker Cole Murphy’s travel bag came a silver, six-sided figure. It was the timeless, childhood-altering Nintendo GameCube.

Outside of team meetings, Murphy and his road roommate Sterling Hofrichter stayed glued to the game system all day. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, Murphy whooped Hofrichter using Link, the sword-wielding character. But in Mario Kart Double Dash, Hofrichter employed Koopa and Baby Mario to zoom by Murphy. Hofrichter’s dominance behind the virtual wheel that weekend came from years of childhood training.

There are no Tigers in Mario Kart, but Hofrichter still managed to act as a pace car for LSU. He placed five of his seven punts inside the 20-yard line and three within the 10. One pinned LSU so close to its own end zone that SU’s defense recorded a safety, jumpstarting a 16-0 Syracuse run nearly led to an upset of the then-No. 25 Tigers. The redshirt sophomore’s ability to flip the field is one of the Orange’s (2-3, 0-1 Atlantic Coast) best weapons.

“Confidence is everything as a kicker and punter,” Hofrichter said. “You have to be confident or you’re not going to succeed. I’ve always felt good.”

You wouldn’t see that confidence just from looking at Hofrichter. His voice does not project. He’s 5-foot-9. He plays video games and golfs. It takes time for him to open up to people — something he and his closest friends have admitted. But he is consistent, and that’s why head coach Dino Babers has said he can see Hofrichter punting on Sundays. Yet the expectation does not alter the Florida native’s approach. He wouldn’t say so even if they did, he said.

“(Hofrichter) never talks about how good he’s doing, he never talks about how bad he’s doing,” said junior long snapper Matt Keller, Hofrichter’s roommate. “He’s just confident in his abilities and he knows he’s good at what he does.”

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The quietness and kicking are what Hofrichter has always been. He started playing soccer at 4, and then football nearly five years later. Practices overlapped and he had to pick one. He picked football but doesn’t know why.

“It turned out to be a really good choice,” Hofrichter said.

Hofrichter wanted to contribute with more than his powerful leg. In seventh grade, that desire had him playing tight end during practice. He held a block but got hit two different ways. His foot got caught in the grass, his weight shifted all to his right leg and he broke his tibia. He wore an orange and blue cast, though at the time he didn’t know anything about Syracuse.

That changed when Hofrichter moved onto Armwood (Florida) High School, a notoriously strong football school that opens Division-I doors. Hoping for a future on the gridiron, he applied as an out-of-district student. Though, he said, his parents were prepared to rent a house in-district, if they needed to.

He played two seasons of junior varsity because Nick Feeley, the younger brother of former NFL kicker Jay Feeley, was the starting kicker. During practice, the two separated from the rest of the team and Feeley often made Hofrichter kick or punt into the wind. Operating in those conditions, Hofrichter said, allows you to kick in anything.

Hofrichter made varsity his last two years, and Armwood went to back-to-back state finals. Opponents returned just four punts his entire junior season, said Kyle Worden, now an assistant coach at Armwood.

“He showed up every single day with his hard hat on ready to work,” Worden said. “You can’t beat that kind of kid. He’s almost irreplaceable.”

On the field, Hofrichter vocalized a confidence that Worden didn’t see during the psychology class he taught Hofrichter. Before the state final against Miami Central, Hofrichter approached the coaching staff with a proposition. He had been working on a new pop-up onside kick. They should open the game with it, he suggested. They did, and Hofrichter’s team recovered the football. Armwood then marched down to field to score the opening touchdown.

Late in his junior season, then-Syracuse head coach Scott Shafer visited practice just to gain exposure with the program, then-Armwood head coach Sean Callahan said. Callahan told Shafer he’d be foolish not to take a look at his kicker. While the defense worked on one side of the field, Hofrichter booted 40-plus yard field goals over the offense on the other end. Shafer saw enough. He called Hofrichter the next week and offered him a scholarship. With no previous letters from SU and no other offers, Hofrichter committed.

“It was crazy,” Hofrichter said. “I was like, ‘OK …’”

He redshirted his first season while former Orange punter Riley Dixon finished his career. Again, Hofrichter waited. Then, his turn came. Through five games in his second year as the starting punter, Hofrichter ranks seventh in the FBS with 46.4 yards per punt. He has filled in on kicking duties, too, when Murphy struggled.

“A lot of people go hot and cold, but I feel like Sterling’s not like that,” Murphy said. “He hits into a groove and he stays in there.”

This past summer, Hofrichter and Keller drove 13 country-music-aided hours from Syracuse to Whitewater, Wisconsin for a specialist camp; Keller wanted to work on his long snapping and Hofrichter, his kicking. Every time Syracuse punts, the two best friends jog onto the field, and repeat the routine that’s turned Hofrichter into a potential NFL prospect.

“Me and him are a lot the same,” Keller said. “That’s why I like him so much. I’m not the loudest guy either, so we expect a lot out of each other and at the end of the day we want to be perfect.”

Published on October 5, 2017 at 8:03 pm

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