This is how it all began for Nick Meadows. Today, he’s West Virginia’s long snapper, replacing John DePalma and helping build the new snap-catch-kick combinations across special teams. New snapper, new holder, new kicker (if only for three games), new punter.

But before this spring was that tape.

In his words, Meadows realized he was playing at a Class A school in West Virginia, the he wasn’t big enough to be an offensive lineman or fast enough to be a linebacker. “I was special as a long snapper,” he said.

So he put together a highlight tape, excluding all of his best plays as a linebacker and focusing on his snaps. That wasn’t fun or easy, because he was conceding his future at one position for a long shot at another. But that was going to be his ticket to Division I campus. (Aside: Not all snapper videos are successful.)

And it worked, with a few stops along the way.

In the summer of 2012, not long before the start of his senior season, Meadows was asked to attend the National Invitational Scholarship Camp, the self-hailed largest kicking, punting and long-snapping camp in the country. The trouble for Meadows, no matter what it might mean to his future, was that the camp was in Wales, Wisconsin.

“It was going to be a lot of money to travel to Wisconsin for me and my family,” he said. “We decided to go to another camp called the Eastern Showcase where there’d be a lot of good players training. We wanted to see what the competition would be like.”

Meadows was named the top performer at the camp. He was the second-most accurate snapper when the contestants were asked to snap at the plastic frame holding the fabric rectangle. They’d get two points for hitting the target, one for hitting the frame and one for reaching a certain speed.

“That’s when we said, ‘Yeah, we need to keep going,’ ” Meadows said.

The family went to the national camp in Wisconsin and Meadows hit the target on 12 of 17 snaps. Kohl’s Camps, the group that conducts the kicking, punting and snapping events, ranked Meadows No. 19 and gave him a five-star rating among snappers it saw at 105 events that year.

http://kohlskicking.com/sites/default/files/heading_imgs/long%20snapping%20camp%202.jpg?1446151171

That’s from the Kohl’s website, and that actually looks like quite a bit of pressure, but if you can’t do that, can you snap for a punt or a field goal? Probably not. Meadows nevertheless earned high marks from the camp for the 2013 class of snappers.

During the 2012 National Scholarship Camp Nick showed consistency towards the target by hitting 12/17 targets. He finished with an average snap time of .74 seconds and can decrease his snap time by continuing to work on his ball hitch. Nick snaps the ball with tremendous velocity and uses his entire body during the snap. Nick will becomes more accurate as his repetitions increase and definitely snaps the ball with the “wow” factor. Nick was the top finisher at the 2012 Eastern Showcase Event and was also the snap competition runner-up. He needs to continue to become more comfortable with his kick sets but has the ability to cover in a spread punt scheme with a 5.0 second 40 yard dash.