Europe’s kickers to gather in Budapest

For the second year in a row, some of Europe’s best kickers and punters are set to arrive in Budapest for the European Kicking Camp that will be held in a little over a month from now, from July 20th to July 22nd. It will once again be hosted, among others, by this year’s unquestionably top kicker/punter in SELAF, Gábor Sviatkó, who is hoping for over 20 players to join in. The camp is organized by four European kickers, Peter Kramberger from Austria, Ronald Hein from Nederlands, Kari Hytönen from Finland and of course Sviatkó. All four are national team kickers.

“It will be Ronald and Kari [with] most of the coaching, Peter and I are in charge for measurements, scoring, time management, etc.”, says Sviatkó.

Some players will arrive earlier, but the actual camp will begin on Friday the 20th with a practice, followed by a more extensive session a day later that will include a competition among the participants.

The idea behind the European Kicking Camp is to help better promote European kickers, raise their level of play and to rank them through the competition part. Last year, Jens Alnervik from Sweden took first place and Sviatkó came in second.

Alnervik, who Sviatkó refers to as the Swedish Wonder is the Swedish national team kicker/punter and a member of the Stockholm Mean Machines, until this year a Eurobowl regular. He kicked a 63 yard field goal in competition last year and he completes the list of national team kickers at 5. Thierry de la Mar, kicker of Netherlands’ youth team will also attend as will Heinz Quast, member of the NFL Europa’s Berlin Thunder in 2004. All the national kickers have NFLE camps experience from prior years. As a former NFLE kicker, Quast will probably have a lot of useful information about kicking and making it to NFLE.

For the rest, this will be a great opportunity to learn from some of the best kickers in Europe.

“I would say half to learn, half to evaluate and rank them. You can compare their stats from last year to see how much they improved”, says Sviatkó.

Thus far, 18 out of potential 23 that have shown interest have confirmed. Hungarians lead the way with 9, while Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Holland and Serbia could potentially all have 2; Switzerland and Sweden will be represented with one. Milan Matović of the Vukovi will be the second SELAF kicker next to Sviatkó.

Even if the number stays at 18, it will stomp 14 from 2006 when the 1st camp was held. The last day for applying is the 30th of June.

“I kicked a long field goal, a 50 in 2005. I did some research, and I learned that Peter Kramberger is pretty much one of the best kickers in all of Europe with 16 years of experience, many NFLE camps . . . We emailed but couldn’t meet to practice because he is running a really busy schedule at work, so it took like 10 months to finally meet where we could kick. We set the date, [and] then I suggested I bring along 1-2 kickers – then we had the idea of making a camp”.

So, what started almost by accident is now in year two and could be a springboard for bigger and better things, ranging from just becoming a better player to reaching higher levels of competition. Sviatkó himself was in NFL Europa camp last year, but didn’t make the cut, and has said he would like to try again in the future.

“The aim is to raise awareness of European kickers, especially to the US, and maybe get 1 or 2 to play college football. It’s everybody’s dream”, says Sviatkó.

List of participants: Peter Kramberger (AUT), Wilhelm Krapfl (AUT), Henrik Juul-Nielsen (DEN), Heinz Quast (DEN), Kari Hytönen (FIN), Aku Kuhlman (FIN), Thierry de la Mar (NED), Ronald Hein (NED), Péter Sipiczky (HUN), Márk Benke (HUN), Ádám Sviatkó (HUN), Lajos Vörös (HUN), Márton Varga (HUN), Csaba Majoros (HUN), Gábor Sviatkó (HUN), Miklós Stumpf (HUN), Péter Horváth (HUN), Aleksandar Radovanović (SER), Milan Matović (SER), Jens Alnervik (SWE), Bernhard Kohli (SUI).

Link to Gábor Sviatkó’s page
Link to Gábor Sviatkó’s kicking camp page