This Week in High School Sport History: The Last Known Drop-Kick Field Goal

High school sports history is filled with remarkable moments that often get lost in the larger story of American sports. This Week in High School Sports History looks back at significant, unusual and sometimes forgotten events from the history of high school athletics.

For the Week of August 31-September 6:

When Worcester High School in Massachusetts formed what is believed to be the nation's first high school sports team in 1859, it opened the door to what would become a defining part of American school culture: scholastic athletics.

More than 165 years later, high school sports look vastly different. Rules have evolved. Equipment and facilities have changed. New sports have emerged while others have disappeared. Programs have risen and fallen, rivalries have been born and generations of athletes have created moments worth remembering.

But too often, those stories fade with time.

This Week in High School Sports History looks back at significant, unusual, and sometimes forgotten moments from the history of high school athletics — stories that may not have made national headlines but helped shape the sports we know today.

Each week, I will revisit moments from the past and put them into context: the athletes, teams, coaches, games, milestones and events that tell the larger story of high school sports in America.

I will kick off this feature, appropriately, with a kicking performance.

The Last Known Drop-Kick Field Goal

Erik Cortinas really did not think much of it in the moment.

The high school All-American rugby player was trying football for the first time as a senior at Mountain View High School in California. During practice, his coaches had been experimenting with a rarely used play and kept getting it wrong.

“The ball came to me. I drop kicked it, and they were surprised,” he recently recalled.

A few weeks later, Cortinas did it again.

This time, it counted.

The Kick That Made History

On Sept. 5, 2014, Cortinas received the snap, dropped the football to the ground and kicked it on the bounce. The 33-yard attempt sailed through the uprights, giving Mountain View an 11-10 lead just before halftime against Del Mar.

Twelve years later, Cortinas' kick remains the most recently documented drop-kick field goal in high school football history. It also was the first documented successful drop-kick field goal since 1975 and the longest since 1948, according to Paul Luchter's Lucky's Amazing Sports List website.

For Cortinas, however, the play was simply part of a football experiment.

He had no previous football experience. An All-American rugby player, he wanted to try football before graduating from high school and ended up playing running back and cornerback while also contributing on special teams.

The Drop-Kick Came Naturally

Cortinas said his head coach, who enjoyed trick plays, incorporated the drop kick — or at least the threat of one — into various special-teams formations, usually on extra-point attempts.

Often, it was a decoy. Cortinas would take the snap and lateral the ball to another back, who would run for a 2-point conversion.

Against Del Mar, though, the drop kick was no decoy.

Mountain View trailed 10-6 late in the second quarter when Noah Kjos sacked the Del Mar quarterback in the end zone for a safety. The play cut Del Mar's lead to 10-8.

After the ensuing kickoff and drive, Cortinas lined up for the unusual field-goal attempt.

He made it.

The kick gave Mountain View the lead for good at 11-10 in its season-opening victory. The Spartans added 20 points in the second half to win 31-10.

“I think my teammates were excited about it,” Cortinas said. “We just built on that [momentum] in the second half.”

The field goal turned out to be Cortinas' only successful field goal of the season — and of his career.

He attempted a couple of drop-kick extra points later that season, but those were generally part of the team's gadget-play repertoire. The biggest challenge, Cortinas said, was having enough time to get the kick away before defenders reached him.

A Nearly Forgotten Skill

The drop kick was once an important part of football.

Before the modern place-kicking game developed, players routinely dropped the ball to the ground and kicked it after the bounce.

By the time Cortinas tried his in 2014, however, the play had become little more than a relic.

The previous documented successful high school drop kick was a 26-yarder by Frank Perotta of New Dorp High School in New York. Perotta's kick came on the final play of a 15-14 victory over Jefferson in 1975.

Cortinas also surpassed the previous California record, a 30-yard drop kick by Steve Diggs of Lassen in 1971.

His 33-yarder, meanwhile, was the longest documented high school drop kick since Harvey Kuenn of Milwaukee Lutheran in Wisconsin connected from 52 yards in 1948.

Kuenn later became a Major League Baseball star in the 1950s and 1960s before managing the Milwaukee Brewers to the 1982 World Series.

A Footnote in Football History

So, nearly a dozen years later, what does Cortinas think about his place in football history?

He said he rarely thinks about the play.

After high school, his football career was over. He played rugby for the Santa Barbara City College club team for one season. Now 29, Cortinas works for the City of Mountain View as a water utility employee.

“It’s mostly forgotten,” Cortinas said of his kick.

Maybe so.

But according to available records, that 33-yard kick remains the most recent documented successful drop-kick field goal in high school football.

This Week in High School History is compiled by Sheldon Shealer, a sports historian and lecturer at Mount St. Mary’s University, whose research focuses on the history and development of American high school football. Entries are compiled from newspaper accounts, state and school records, historical publications, archival collections, and other documented sources. Special thanks to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), whose records help preserve the history of high school sports.

Add us as a preferred source on Google