Viking Kicker Zach Brown had an epiphany two weeks into fall camp in August.
   
For two years, he'd been fighting to stay more involved on the field, either as a wide receiver or safety. Even though he set a PSU record by making 18 of 25 field goals last season, he badgered the PSU coaching staff into letting him participate in both blocking and tackling drills this summer.
   
“I'd been used to being on the field for every play (he mostly played wide receiver and both safety positions in high school),” Brown said.
   
“Then, one day  it just made sense.  I don't know why, I'd recently been focused on my kicking.  One day, I kicked some long field goals during practice. No one said anything. As I walked off the field after practice, I thought 'I can do this. This is easy'.”
   
Actually, a lot comes easy athletically for the 21-year-old sophomore out of McNary High School in Keizer.  Zach Brown is what's known as a “natural athlete”.
   
He started playing soccer when he was four years old.  By the time he'd finished high school, he'd tried swimming, golf, track (long jump and hurdles) basketball and baseball.
   
He was a four-year letter winner in football and competed in basketball, track and soccer at McNary High School. He was an elite soccer player for a Beaverton soccer club.  A separated shoulder limited him to kicking and punting duties the second half of McNary's 2007 football season.
   
And that was no small part of why former PSU Head Coach Jerry Glanville recruited him to the Park Blocks, although with the promise that he'd be a wide receiver (which he dabbled in, despite taking over the kicking duties his freshman season).
   
Glanville gave Brown a glimmer of his potential talent, telling him that he was a good kicker.  But, Brown said he “needed to hear it from other people because I thought Coach Glanville was just trying fill his kicking spot.”
   
Even though he had a streak of nine straight and made 14 of his last 16, led the Big Sky Conference and ranked sixth in the nation with 1.64 field goals made per game in 2009, Brown maintains that he also could have improved at either wide receiver or defensive back.
   
Like a lot of good athletes, Brown was very hard on himself if something went wrong on the field, like a missed field goal.  “How do you get over something that hurts you mentally?,” he asked…and that pain may have been an impediment to his focusing entirely on his kicking game.
   
He credits PSU Long Snapper Braedyn Eagle with helping him find the answer.
   
“Braedyn helped me see that acceptance was the key.  How do you get over something that hurts you mentally?  You stay mentally positive.  If you miss a kick, there's nothing wrong with that.  If you make it, you can be happy with yourself.  He said to accept it and be positive,” recalled Brown.
   
With that advice, the penny dropped.  Brown already lived in the moment, totally focused on the sport of the moment.
   
His soccer club took trips to Europe when he was 15 and 18, but all he remembers is the soccer.  “When I'm playing sports, I'm totally focused on what I'm doing.  I never look out the window when we're traveling.  When I step onto the field to kick, I don't see any faces.  There are just shapes around me.”
   
Because of that focus he claimed to not remember much about Europe (his teams played in Germany, England, Denmark and Scotland) from either trip.  He wants to go back to more fully experience the history and culture.
   
Those trips, though, had a great deal to do with his decision to concentrate on football over soccer, where he'd been good enough to potentially have a very promising future.
   
“Crowds, it was the crowds.  In Europe, soccer is really big and there are huge crowds.  Not so, here.  I like playing in front of large crowds,” he said.
   
Brown's ability to focus and compartmentalize is probably the most important part of being a great kicker, said PSU Special Teams Coach John Ely.
   
“It's mostly a mental game. Oh, Zach has the tools, but it's the ability to focus and block out external distractions. 
   
“When I arrived here, I asked him what his stats were like last year.  He didn't know.  What's important to him is his next kick.  It isn't what he's done, and that's the appropriate attitude,” said Ely, who added that Brown is potentially the best kicker he's ever coached.  In fact, he has the potential to be one of the best in all college football.
   
Brown takes his misses pretty hard, said Ely.  “He took that miss at Oregon (from 52 yards—enough distance, wide left) pretty hard.  But I talked to him the next day and he's already talking about the ones he's going to make at Hillsboro.”
   
Brown lives in the moment.
   
A health science major, doesn't have a career play yet.  “I haven't thought much about it.”  A grade point average he'd like to boast about?  “I don't know what my grades are.  I never look at my grade slips.  If I'm learning, I assume I'm doing it right.”
   
Still, he is toying with the thought of physical therapy as a career---after football, and that has taken on a new dimension since he decided to throw himself completely into kicking.
   
“Right now, my goal is to get to the NFL,” he said.  That's a relatively new goal which materialized in summer camp “the day I started kicking for real (though his stats from last year indicate a guy 'kicking for real').”
   
Interestingly, Brown doesn't watch college football on television.
   
“I figure I can do what most of those guys are doing and I just don't find it particularly exciting,” although, being directly involved on the sidelines with his teammates during a game is another story, he said, and whatever he ultimately decides to do, he'd like it to revolve around sports.
   
There's something few people know about Zach Brown.
   
“I have a tattoo.  Most people don't know about it.”
   
Sure enough, tattooed onto his upper back is the phrase:  “Impossibilities will never stop me from achieving my dreams”.
   
“It's not necessary to show that to people.  I believe it very strongly,” he said.