This two-sport fall athlete is playing soccer and football, but isn’t “just a kicker”

Brent Pfeifer looked out at a soccer field filled with potential football players and saw one that did both.

And he isn’t just a kicker.

“Football is a demanding sport,” he said. “So sometimes as a coach you just grit your teeth at the situation, but when he told me he wanted to do both, I was excited for him.”

Andrew Bliss, a then-freshman, came to the Maize South football coach and told him he played soccer but wanted to come out for football. But he wasn’t trying to be “just a kicker.” He wanted to be a receiver.

Pfeifer said he didn’t know whether Bliss could handle the workload. But he took a step back.

“High school is about memories,” he said. “If a kid want to do something, I just feel like it’s our job as educators to go to the ends of the earth to make that happen for him.”

Bliss grew up with a soccer ball at his foot, and it shows. He is one of the Mavericks’ top players. He has quickness almost no one could match and can play any position on the field.

He will likely go on to play in college if he chooses. So for him, football was more of an experience than a long-term commitment, he said.

The crossover between soccer and football is common but almost always starts and stops at the kicker. Bishop Carroll’s Carson Lee plays forward for the Golden Eagles’ soccer team and will kick Friday against Derby. And Northwest’s Carson Arndt does the same for Northwest.

Even Maize South junior Ethan Wiens serves as the Mavericks’ goalkeeper and kicker.

Bliss wanted more.

“I just feel like football is one of those sports you don’t want to miss out on,” he said. “I just wanted to experience it while I could. I didn’t want to go out there and say, ‘Hey, I just want to kick.’ I want the full experience.”

With the demand Bliss was signing up for, Pfeifer and soccer coach Rey Ramirez had to start picking up their conversations. If Bliss was going to play both at a high level, there had to be a schedule and a plan to not overwork him.

Ramirez said he thinks he and Pfeifer have done a good job of that over the past four years, but a lot of it is on Bliss.

“A lot of times, there’s only so much that a coach can do, that a family and upbringing can teach,” he said. “The other half of it is talent. It’s what you’re born with. And he’s just born with something that a lot of people aren’t.”

Ramirez said it takes a special kind of athlete to do both as well as Bliss does and hold down a job and go to school and balance a social life. Bliss is just that kind of kid. He even moved from his starting spot as a forward to the center of the defensive line to help open up the field for more talent.

“Our conversation with him was, ‘Do we want to win games or do we want to score goals?” Ramirez said. “It’s a sacrifice. He dropped probably 20 goals and however many assists for the team.”

Bliss didn’t start playing football until middle school, and when he was going into freshman year, he asked his parents what he should do. They said if he could handle it, he should do both.

“But they said, ‘If it gets too much, pick your favorite,’ “ Bliss said. “I haven’t been able to pick my favorite yet, I guess.”

Bliss said some nights are rougher than others. With practice football Monday, soccer game Tuesday, football practice Wednesday, soccer game Thursday and a football game Friday. But he hasn’t folded under that schedule.

“I always got more to give,” he said.

And through the four years, watching what Bliss has done just to be ready and perform at every game, Pfeifer said it has helped give him a new perspective on what it means to be a multi-sport athlete.

“For me, as a parent and a father, if you meet Andrew Bliss and talk with him for 30 minutes, you’re going to want your son to be like that,” Pfeifer said.