By Chris Fontanazza / Metro News
Soon the Mountaineers will officially add a 28th member to their 2012 recruiting class. kicker Josh Lambert from Garland High School (TX) committed to West Virginia University the day after National Signing Day and will soon be faxing his signed letter of intent to the Mountaineer coaching staff.
Lambert is a 2-star kicker by Scout.com and comes from a high school that has produced a lot of solid kickers in the NCAA, including former Ray Guy Award winner and Oklahoma State kicker Matt Fodge. Garland head football coach Jeff Jordan says his program has been grateful to have had so many great kickers and Lambert is one of the best they’ve had.
“We’ve been really lucky,” stated Jordan. “We’ve had a lot of really good kickers come through over the years. Josh is right up there with any of them that have come through. We had a kid kick for us that went to [Texas] A&M and Fodge went to Oklahoma State.”
Lambert’s decision to choose the Mountaineers happened very quickly. Throughout the recruiting process he was never on WVU’s radar. For that matter he didn’t even kick at any of WVU’s camps. It’s very rare for a school to sign a kicker without watching him kick live.
“It’s very different because everybody watches the video and people will come watch them in games and this was so strange by West Virginia,” explained Jordan. “Almost everyone tells the kickers and punters they’re not going to offer them until they can actually see them kick in person.”
WVU’s coaching staff took Jordan sight unseen after receiving seeral recommendations. Then shortly after National Signing Day Lambert had a scholarship offer from West Virginia.
“It came out of the blue,” said Jordan. “Josh had been getting looks from several people and he had offers from several smaller schools.”
“From my understanding it all came down one Thursday afternoon,” Jordan said. “They called last week and said ‘Hey look we may have something open, but we don’t know how it’s going to play out' and all of that stuff. But lo and behold it popped open and everything came down after signing day.”
Lambert did have scholarship offers from many Division II schools, Louisiana Tech was interested, but wanted him to gray shirt and both Oklahoma and Texas A&M wanted him to walk-on. West Virginia was by far the best offer he had and he will compete for kickoffs, kicking and punting.
punting is the area WVU needs the most help in. There were times last season when West Virginia’s punters looked atrocious. WVU ranked dead last in the conference and at one point of the season the Mountaineers were ranked dead last in the nation in net punting.
The Texas native has had a very successful career at Garland. During his junior year he kicked a school record 53-yard field goal. He also has three career field goals of 50-plus yards and eight career field goals of 47-plus yards.
Jordan and the rest of the Garland coaching staff are very happy Lambert is heading to West Virginia and their reputation of sending kickers to the Division I level continues. Jordan also feels Lambert will fit right in with the rest of the football team.
“The other kids down here love him and they just consider him to be part of the team,” said Jordan. “You know how sometimes kickers are a little separate from everybody else, but Josh has never been like that.”
It’s still unknown when Lambert will arrive in Morgantown because he’s still getting everything finalize with his scholarship and letter of intent, but Jordan said Lambert will be in Morgantown in time for fall camp, if not earlier.
