Chris Sailer (born January 9, 1977) is an American football trainer of kicking specialists. He works with high school placekickers and punters and evaluates them for college football programs. Sailer was named an All-American as both a kicker and a punter while playing college football for the

UCLA Bruins The UCLA Bruins are the athletic teams that represent the University of California, Los Angeles. The Bruin men's and women's teams participate in NCAA Division I as part of the Pac-12 Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) ...

. He played professionally in the

Arena Football League The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...

(AFL).

Early life

Sailer was born to Elisabeth and Hans Sailer, who had emigrated in 1969 from West Germany to Burbank, California. His parents were soccer fans who knew nothing about football. They exposed him to soccer early, and he excelled as a youth soccer player. Sailer attended high school in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, where he was both the kicker and punter at Notre Dame High. As a senior, he set a state single-season record with 22 field goals, making seven from 50 yards of more to help his team win a Division III title. He was named to the ''USA Today'' All-USA team, and finished his prep career with a state record 33 career field goals. He also played soccer as a defender.

College career

Sailer decided to attend the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

(UCLA), because Bruins football coach

Terry Donahue Terrence Michael Donahue (June 24, 1944 – July 4, 2021) was an American football coach and executive. He served as the head coach at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1976 to 1995, compiling a record of 151–74–8. His 15 ...

and soccer coach

Sigi Schmid Siegfried "Sigi" Schmid (; March 20, 1953 – December 25, 2018) was a German-American soccer coach who had the most wins in the history of Major League Soccer (MLS). Born in Tübingen, West Germany, he moved to the United States with his fam ...

allowed him to play both sports, even though the two teams'

seasons A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...

overlap. His

athletic scholarship An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university or a private high school awarded to an individual based predominantly on his or her ability to play in a sport. Athletic scholarships are common in the United ...

was rare for a kicker, a position which coaches often filled with walk-ons. He put soccer on hold as a freshman to get acclimated to school while playing football. Later, he decided he could not play both, and chose football. As a freshman in

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake str ...

, Sailer won the job as punter and ranked 15th in the country with a 42.2 yard average. After kicker

Bjorn Merten Bjorn Merten is a former American football placekicker who played college football at the University of California, Los Angeles and attended Centreville High School in Clifton, Virginia. He was a consensus All-American in 1993 as a freshman. He ...

graduated, Sailer assumed the position in

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

, becoming the first Bruin since

Frank Corral Juan Francisco Corrales Rodríguez (born June 16, 1955), better known as Frank Corral, is a Mexican-American former NFL placekicker who played from 1978 to 1981. He attended Norte Vista High School in Riverside, California and played college foo ...

1977 Events January * January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. * January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democrat ...

to handle both punts and kicks. That season, Sailer made four field goals in a 39–31 win over

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

, including a 56-yard kick that stood as a school record until Ka'imi Fairbairn's 60-yarder in 2015. Sailer finished the season as the runner-up behind

Martín Gramática Martín Gramática (born November 27, 1975) is an Argentine-born former American football placekicker in the National Football League (NFL) for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Indianapolis Colts, Dallas Cowboys, and New Orleans Saints. He played c ...

for the

Lou Groza Award The Lou Groza Award is presented annually to the top college football placekicker in the United States by the Palm Beach County Sports Commission. The award is named after former Ohio State Buckeyes and Cleveland Browns player Lou Groza. It has be ...

, given annually to the nation's top college kicker. He was named a first-team All-American kicker by the

American Football Coaches Association The American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) is an association of over 11,000 American football coaches and staff on all levels. According to its constitution, some of the main goals of the American Football Coaches Association are to "mainta ...

and the

Walter Camp Football Foundation The Walter Camp Football Foundation (WCFF) is one of the organizations whose College Football All-America Team is recognized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The organization also presents various awards. It is named in honor of foo ...

. Additionally, the Football Writers Association of America named Sailer to their first team as a punter. He is the only player in UCLA history to have received first-team All-American honors at two positions in the same season. In his senior year in

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

, Sailer struggled with his field goals after being bothered for most of the season with a groin injury. He suffered the injury during practice when he did not warm up before participating in a kicking duel with a local sports anchorman.

Professional career

After leaving college, Sailer signed with the

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...

in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL), and played for the Los Angeles Dragons of the

Spring Football League The Spring Football League (SFL) was a short lived professional american football minor league that existed for only one season in 2000. Spring football Founded by several ex-NFL players such as Eric Dickerson, Drew Pearson, Bo Jackson, an ...

and four years in the

AFL AFL may refer to: Sports * American Football League (AFL), a name shared by several separate and unrelated professional American football leagues: ** American Football League (1926) (a.k.a. "AFL I"), first rival of the National Football Leagu ...

. While still playing, he also ran organized camps and provided private tutoring to high school kickers and punters. He started Chris Sailer Kicking in 1999, taking financial losses on his camps to build his client base in pursuit of his goal of forming the first national recruiting camp for kicking specialists at the high school level. He held the first national camp in

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

in 2003, when 125 kickers and punters participated in the presence of 30 NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision coaches. Sailer's kicking camp became the most prominent in the country. He is routinely contacted by college coaches to assist in identifying potential

college recruit A college ( Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...

s for their

special teams In American football, the specific role that a player takes on the field is referred to as their "position". Under the modern rules of American football, both teams are allowed 11 players on the field at one time and have "unlimited free substitu ...

. Players which he identifies as top recruits generally receive scholarships from major football programs. Sailer partnered with former UCLA teammate Chris Rubio, who provides services for

long snapper In American football, the long snapper (or deep snapper) is a center on special teams whose duty is to snap the football over a longer distance, typically around 15 yards during punts, and 7–8 yards during field goals and extra point att ...

s as part of Rubio Long Snapping. Greg Biggins of

Scout.com Scout Media is an integrated sports publishing company that produces Internet content covering hundreds of professional and college teams across America. The company was founded in 2001 and was acquired by Fox Sports in 2005. In 2013, Fox Sports ...

described Chris Sailer Kicking as "pretty much a monopoly". , Sailer's camps were drawing an estimate of 450 to 500 kickers, punter, and long snappers. By 2014, thirteen of the 32 starting kickers in the NFL had attended his camp. Sailer is on the selection committee for the Chris Sailer Award, presented annually to the top high school placekicker in the nation. The award began in 2011 as part of the Herbalife National High School Football Awards.

References

External links

Chris Sailer Kicking
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sailer, Chris 1977 births Living people American football placekickers Notre Dame High School (Sherman Oaks, California) alumni UCLA Bruins football players San Francisco 49ers players San Jose SaberCats players Players of American football from Burbank, California Oklahoma Wranglers players Arizona Rattlers players American people of German descent Soccer players from Los Angeles County, California UCLA Bruins men's soccer players Men's association football defenders American men's soccer players