Despite all of those times playing football in the backyard with her family or seeing the Garfield G-Men football team’s games as a spectator, sophomore Hannah Timmons said she could have never imagined actually suiting up for the varsity team. That is what happened when she was recruited to become the team’s new place kicker just one week before the season started and she has enjoyed every minute of it.
“I always thought it would be cool, but I never thought I would be able to do it,” Timmons told The Weekly Villager on Nov. 24. “As someone who watched Garrettsville football for so long, you watch the game and watch the coaches and just assume they had to practice and they were this good because they were this good, but Garrettsville football has so many things that come into it.”
In Timmons’ first season as the G-Men’s kicker, she converted 31 of 44 extra points to make her mark as the first female kicker in school history.
According to Timmons, the journey began just a week before the start of the 2024 season.
Timmons said she originally expressed interest in becoming Garfield’s new kicker during the spring when she heard the team had a need but was preoccupied with her training as a (discus?) thrower for the track team. That interest soon subsided because she assumed that a current player on the team would eventually fill that void.
She acknowledged that she had a busy schedule on her plate by being a member of the varsity girls’ soccer team and also belonging to 4-H. That all changed when she was approached by Coaches Mike Moser and Michael Paes to become Garfield’s new kicker.
“It was almost surreal,” Timmons recalled. “I had him as a teacher and love him as a person, but it was a really big thing because it meant how much I was important to him and how much the team needed me, so it definitely made me feel a lot more secure in my position.”
Before Timmons claimed the job, she said she had a private training session with former Hiram kicker Chris Miller to learn the finer points of kicking a football.
While she was no stranger to kicking a ball because of her soccer background, Timmons noted that it required a different approach to kick a football through the uprights of a goalpost.
“We knew that I could kick a soccer ball pretty hard,” she said. “When Chris came, he refined my technique and told me exactly what I needed to do so after a few hours I had it down and that was enough to go into tryouts with and be a little more comfortable.”
After a tryout when she nailed at least 10 kicks through the uprights, Timmons was told she had the job. Although she already had most of her free time occupied with soccer training, she also found the time to fit football practice into her schedule as football practice usually took place right after the end of school and soccer practice took place later in the afternoon. Although it required an adjustment on her end, she made it work so she could split time between the sports.
Timmons acknowledged that being such a late comer to the football team made it difficult for her to immediately fit in, but what also made the opportunity more exciting was that her younger brother, Jack, was also on the team.
“I do not think I would be able to do it without him,” she said. “Coming off of the sideline and worried and just overwhelmed, he would sit there and would tell me to breathe and do a quick prayer. He would always be one of the first people right next to me to tell me it was okay.”
Timmons said she quickly became one of the guys and enjoyed a strong season with a young team that was supposed to be in a transition year after graduating one of the most talented senior classes in school history but still won the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference Grey Tier banner and advanced to the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division V Region 17 quarterfinal.
After a strong debut season, Timmons said she is just getting started.
“I have to come back,” she added. “I was asked that so many times that season by coaches, players and fans. There was no doubt in my head that I wanted to come back. Now that I have gotten a taste of it and saw my record, it just makes me want to progress and get so much better.”
