NFL Star Hauschka ’07 Returns to Midd

Two months after kicking the Seattle Seahawks to the franchise’s first Super Bowl victory, Steven Hauschka ’07 returned to Middlebury, where as a sophomore he walked on to the football team and into the record books.

Director of Athletic Communications Brad Nadeau spearheaded the effort to bring Hauschka back to campus.

“The Seahawks won the Super Bowl and about a week later I talked to [Football Coach Bob Ritter] with the idea of bringing him back to campus,” he said. “So I started making some calls to different people on campus and talked to Dave Kloepfter in student activities. He later talked to MCAB and they said they would love to have [Steve] back.”

On Thursday, April 17, Hauschka sat down with Sports Illustrated senior writer Alexander Wolff in McCullough social space for an hour-long interactive discussion with Wolff and audience members.

“For me, as someone who doesn’t know the NFL as well as [Sports Illustrated senior writer] Peter King does, it was actually an advantage, because I was able to ask the questions I really didn’t know the answer to,” Wolff said. “But I had the same curiosity a lot of people in the audience did.”

The Seahawks’ kicker was introduced with a five-minute long highlight reel that included footage of both his time at Middlebury, when he re-wrote Panther record books, as well his 2013-14 season with the Seahawks during which he made 33 of 35 field goals as the second most accurate kicker in the NFL.

For Hauschka, it was a celebration of the long journey that took him from Middlebury to North Carolina State and then five professional teams before landing with the Seahawks, who earlier this month, signed him to a three-year, $9.15 million deal.

Hauschka stressed that a combination of visualization, meditation and resulting hyper-focus have keyed his success thus far in the NFL.

“I have this ability to hyper-focus — almost like a horse with its blinders on,” he said. “I think I probably have more in common with the sports psychologist than a lot of my teammates.”

He also credited being cut from the men’s lacrosse team and relegated to the junior varsity soccer team at Middlebury with preparing him for being cut in the NFL.

“[Getting cut] is one of those moments that tests you deep down,” he said. “But I took it as a sign that I need to improve on something.”

Though he was among the final lacrosse cuts as a first-year, Hauschka improved enough to make the team his sophomore spring. By that point he had already walked on to the football team, convinced by his roommate Scott Secor ’07 to take up kicking.

Almost immediately, Hauschka began hearing that Division I opportunities — and perhaps the NFL — could be in his future. Steve Wolf, a former NFL punter who coaches specialists, told Hauschka he had Division I talent the first time he saw him kick.

“I thought he was crazy,” Hauschka said.

The accuracy of Wolf’s prediction was on full display when Hauschka took a break from the question-and-answer format to screen a preview of a GoPro video he shot during Super Bowl week in the lead up to the game.

Following the screening, Hauschka answered questions from a variety of audience members, including students, professors and children on a variety of subjects.

“He cracked the window open to that world,” Wolff said. “The sizzle was the Super Bowl champion who came from humble Middlebury College, but the steak, in the auditorium, was these insights into the interior life of the kicker. And then the bonus was how this can apply to anybody if they’re facing an obstacle.”

Hauschka answered questions around NFL culture — how head injuries are going to impact the NFL in the future and the relationship between players in the locker room — as well as the story of how he met his wife Lindsey, a fellow Middlebury alumna.

“For him to take the time [to come back here], Middlebury must be pretty special to him,” Wolff said. “Two truisms about Middlebury that seem to bear out: real loyalty from the alumni base; and also they tend to marry one another  — and we had both on display.”

Following his two-day visit, which included talks at the local high school and elementary school in addition to the College, Hauschka returned to Seattle to participate in the team’s voluntary offseason workouts — the first organized team activities of the new season.