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After a gruesome ATV crash, Hubbard grad eyes placekicking role with YSU football team
HUBBARD
Thankfully, Colin Burdette’s misfortune as a sophomore didn’t affect his good fortune as a graduating senior.
The 18-year-old recent Hubbard High graduate will begin classes at Youngstown State University this summer as a freshman who anticipates trying out for the football squad for the 2017 season.
“I was asked to try out and, hopefully, get an invitation to camp the first week of August,” said Burdette, who had a respectable career as a placekicker and punter at Hubbard, while also playing on the school’s soccer team.
As a junior, Burdette kicked for 1,275 yards (55.4-yard average) and punted 10 times for a 37-yard average. As a senior, he had 3,051 yards in kickoffs for a 54.5 average and he had 35 punts that averaged 33 yards. During the 2015 and 2016 seasons, Burdette converted 49 of 59 PATs and six of 10 field goals.
Some stats that the 6-2, 165-pound Burdette didn’t want included broken facial bones, 35 plates and screws, two broken arms and a stage 4 spleen laceration.
He owes the nasty numbers to an ATV accident on Sept. 20, 2014.
“I was going around a blind turn and someone else was coming the other direction and we hit head-on and helmet-to-helmet,” Colin said. “We both went over our handlebars and, despite wearing full helmets, they both broke,” he said of the riders’ cranial protection. “The other person flew off the back and smacked his head against the ground and had a real bad concussion.”
He spent nine days in a hospital and didn’t return to school until Nov. 1.
Before the sophomore-year collision, Colin played in 13 soccer games and six football games. He was the kickoff-only guy, while Cameron Syersak booted field goals and B.J. Fronzaglio punted.
Three days after the accident, Burdette had facial reconstructive surgery.
“They cut the top of my scalp from ear to ear and pulled all the skin down off my face,” he said. “Then they put, roughly, 35 titanium plates and screws in the bones to help them fuse.”
The gruesome procedure — followed by a 13-hour, nose-rebuilding surgery in February 2015 — seemed like a distant nightmare once Burdette recovered enough to play both soccer and football in his final two years of high school.
Prior to his sophomore year, Burdette knew that Hubbard coach Brian Hoffman lost his placekicker, Vlassios Pizanias, to graduation after the 2013-14 school year, so Burdette availed himself.
He didn’t seem to be apprehensive about returning to both contact sports as a junior.
“I had to wear a full-face mask because I couldn’t risk getting hit in the nose again,” he said of soccer, “but, in football, they weren’t too worried because I already had a face mask with guard. Other than a red card for two games that forced me to sit out, I played the whole [soccer] season.”
Colin played basketball his freshman year, but another attempt to participate this past school year was ephemeral.
“I went up for a dunk and came down and popped my knee out of place. I did not want to risk doing that again. I didn’t want to hurt myself because I knew I was planning on going to YSU.”
Burdette finishes high school as a four-year letterman and two-year captain in soccer and a three-year football letterman and a two-year letterman in baseball.
Colin said he had conversations with YSU’s special teams coach Ron Stoops about trying out for the Penguins and Burdette talked with head coach Bo Pelini during spring practice visits.
“Coach Stoops said he’d be more than happy to have me join for the upcoming season and coach Pelini said he hopes to see me again this summer.”
Burdette said he was told that, competition-wise, Connor McFadden graduated and is going to grad school elsewhere to pursue a Masters degree, while another scholarship kicker from a few years ago moved back to Indiana.
So far, that leaves placekicker Zak Kennedy and punter Mark Schuler.
“As of now, it’s only the three of us.”
Colin said he’s friends with Poland kicker Colton McFadden, who just signed with Kent State.
Burdette will attempt to make the YSU squad as a walk-on without need for scholarship because his tuition will be covered through his mother’s employment at the university as an advisor to the general studies program. Molly Burdette also teaches a communications class.
However, Colin Burdette will have to pay his own room and board since he plans to live on campus.
“I’m hoping that, if I make the team, then next year I can get a partial scholarship that will cover the room and board. We’ll have to see.”
Just a few years ago, Burdette couldn’t envision that his soccer-to-football-followed-by-an-accident evolution would ever lead to college football plans.
“No, I never thought it would, actually. A couple people suggested it because they knew Hubbard didn’t have another person to kick a football and I knew I could kick a soccer ball pretty far.”
Burdette doesn’t think he’s leaving the kicking cupboard dry at Hubbard.
“I’ve got an apprentice,” Burdette said of Anthony Corrin.
“He used to play soccer, too, but I’ve been trying to teach him the ways of football. He’s getting real good at it,” Burdette said of Corrin, a junior-to-be and heir-apparent, who joined the Eagles’ football team around week 8 of the 2016 season.
Among Burdette’s better high school memories was last season’s game-winning 36-yard field goal with 14 seconds left to snap a 28-28 tie against Jefferson.
Burdette’s longest field-goal distance was 39 yards as a senior, but he said he’s booted several in the mid-50 range in practice.