Walk-on gets kicks in bid to join UNLV

Thursday, April 18, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

IT DIDN'T LOOK pretty, but at least it made it through the uprights. And since they don't give style points for kicking footballs, who cared how it looked?

And as long as Nick Jones can keep booting them over the crossbar, he doesn't care how they look either.

Once again, the UNLV placekicking job is up for grabs and as spring practice heats up, so does the competition. The usual suspects -- Alan Dileo, Marshall Mathews and Jordan Bedard -- have returned to Rebel Park, only to be joined by Jones, a barefooted booter who followed Nick Garritano at Chaparral High and later kicked at Green Valley.

Coach Jeff Horton says someone will emerge as UNLV's kicker. And he gave Jones, a walk-on from the Air Force Academy, a good shot of being that someone.

"He's looked good," Horton said. "Like last year, all I'm asking is just be consistent from 40 yards in. Anything else is a bonus."

Wednesday, the kickers had their contest and Jones more than held his own. Of course, after some of the stuff Jones had been through, kicking a football is no sweat. It certainly beats trying to eat your dinner while sitting at attention and having to ask for permission to use the ketchup.

Jones was supposed to kick for the Air Force. Instead, six weeks of personal hell disguised as a tradition called "Beast Barracks" left him physically unable to perform before his first semester.

He hardly ate. He took daily doses of verbal abuse. His weight dropped more than 30 pounds. Yet he stuck it out through "Beast" and lasted at the academy for nearly two years.

Ultimately, he resigned his commission not because he wasn't tough enough to hack it, but because he decided he wasn't prepared to devote his life to the Air Force.

"I was second in my class," Jones said. "They wanted to put me in flight school and they wanted me to commit for 14 years. When I went in, I was prepared for six years. But not 14.

"Still, I've missed it every day since I left. That's why being out here (at UNLV) means so much to me. I missed being part of the team and I love the game."

It was Garritano, the former Rebel kicking star, who encouraged Jones to stick with his dream of playing football again and to consider UNLV as the place for his dream to be realized.

And while Jones has not emerged as the frontrunner, he is definitely in the hunt. And his dream has added incentive with UNLV set to host Air Force Sept. 7 at Sam Boyd Stadium. Already, he has heard from old friends in Colorado Springs who have given him some grief, most of it of the kidding variety.

"I'd love to kick against them," he said. "That would be the ultimate."

That's ultimate, as in payback.