Football: Fate kicks Higgs into Andrews football lore

ANDREWS A simple real estate decision may have saved the Andrews Mustangs season.

Jake Higgs and his right foot moved from Buckeye, Ariz., to Andrews earlier this summer and his family happened to move two houses down the street from Mustangs head football coach Jeff Cordell.

Higgs, a sophomore who has never played football but has played soccer since he was 4, was asked by Cordell to go to the Mustang Bowl with him one Wednesday to see if he could kick field goals.

“It was the first time he kicked and he liked it,” Cordell said. “That night he hit from 45 or 46 yards and the rest is history.”

The rest of the story is this: Higgs taught himself how to handle the pressure, the wind, the angles and everything else that goes into kicking.

“I didn’t think I’d be able to do it,” Higgs said. “That first night I did all right. I taught myself how to adjust to a different ball.”

All of that set him up for three important kicks Nov. 13 at Walton Field in Kermit.

The first was a 23-yard field goal that gave Andrews a lead in a Class 3A Division I bi-district playoff with Fort Stockton and helped send the game to double overtime.

The second an extra point that tied the game 33-33 to send it to a third overtime.

The final kick was a booming 42-yarder that sailed through the uprights, and after an interception by the Mustangs defense, it sent the team to a regional showdown with Abilene Wylie (9-1) at 7:30 tonight at Grande Communications Stadium in Midland.

“I was really nervous,” Higgs said. “I felt more nervous about the extra point, because I had to make it. If I missed that, we lose.

“We kick 50-yarders at the end of practice, so 42 yards is just getting warmed up.”

“The Foot,” as he is called by the Andrews coaching staff, didn’t miss that kick. He did miss a 49-yarder earlier in the game, though the kick was on line and hit the crossbar.

Getting over missed kicks this season has been a key part of becoming a better kicker for Higgs, something that is much different than his time spent playing club soccer for West Texas United in Midland.

“The biggest difference is the pressure that is on (kicking),” Higgs said. “In soccer, you can mess up, but it doesn’t matter because the game keeps going. In football, everyone is watching and you only get one chance.”

Higgs has made the most of those chances this season, including the luckiest of all — choosing what street to live on.