WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — It is a long way from the hills of Northern Vermont to the plains of North Dakota.

 

But that is nothing compared to the other journey that Warren Taylor has made: from the couch watching football to the huddle of the North Dakota Fighting Hawks.

 

Taylor, a longtime Williamstown resident and one-time Mount Greylock Regional School student, took an unconventional route to the University of North Dakota, where this fall he is a graduate student and one of just two punters on the Hawks’ roster.

 

"I just learned punting completely on my own," Taylor said this week in a phone interview from Grand Forks between two-a-day practice sessions. "Come to think of it, I can't remember the first time I went out and started kicking. But I played some flag football [at the University of Denver] as an intramural sport.

 

"I was kicking some balls with friends there, experimenting with things."

 

But they were serious experiments for Taylor, who was convinced that he could train himself to kick at a high level.

 

Today, he can boom a punt 50 yards down the field and is serious contender for playing time on the Division I Football Championship Subdivision squad that opens the season Aug. 30 at home against Mississippi Valley State and goes to the University of Washington one week later.

 

This week, he talked to iBerkshires.com about the road that brought him to Grand Forks:

 

Question: How long have you called Williamstown home?

 

Taylor: We moved to Williamstown when, I think, I was 7 years old. I remember going into second grade there. And I've been there through kinda now. My family is there. I've been to different places.

 

Q: Where did you go to school?

 

Taylor: Williamstown Elementary School, then Mount Greylock. My junior and senior year I was skiing and went to Burke Mountain Academy.

 

Q: So you must have been a pretty serious skier?

 

Taylor: At that point. I stopped skiing after high school.

 

Q: Why?

 

Taylor: I wasn't amazing at it, but really I wanted to try something new. Basically, I made the decision to stop skiing after high school.

 

Then I went to college in Denver.

 

Q: Were you one of those people who was a big football fan but just never played the game?

 

Taylor: I started watching a lot more football later in high school and in college. In the middle of high school, I started falling in love with watching games.

 

I kinda saw the art of punting and thought I could maybe do it better. I went back and forth between practicing and watching videos.

 

Q: It sounds like it could be a pretty lonely pursuit out there kicking on your own, chasing down the balls and kicking again.

 

Taylor: It was. I usually had two balls. I'd kick them, go to the other end of the field and kick the ball back. It definitely took some time.

 

When I was in Williamstown in the summers, working part time at Williams College Science Shop, I'd kick at Poker Flats — the field down behind the tennis courts — or on the turf field if it was open. But a lot of the time, it was in use.

 

Q: Mostly by yourself?

 

Taylor: I wanted to get proficient before I brought other people in. I wanted to prove something before I kinda let the cat out of the bag. I didn't want to talk about how I wanted to do this and not have anything to show for it.

 

When I did let people know, I had friends in Williamstown to come out in the winter and throw me snaps. And a lot of my friends in Denver would come out and help me when available

 

It was always me trying to push them to come out, especially on cold days. They couldn't always come out in the cold.

 

Q: Are there mechanical options to deliver snaps?

 

Taylor: The passing machines can do it. The problem is they cost, I think, two grand. I thought about making one, but that didn't come to fruition. It would have been difficult. The problem with those is you need someone to work them. They don't feed themselves like a pitching machine.

 

Q: I want to go back to something you said earlier, this idea of having something to prove. At what point did it go from a fun activity to something more serious? 

 

Taylor: From the very beginning, it was serious in my mind that I could make it to this level. I didn't want to work on something and not see it to fruition.

 

Q: What was the process like of finding a school.

 

Taylor: I reached out to every Division I school. I talked to about 20 of them.

 

Only four or five wanted to talk to me more after I said I had never played football. The rest lost all interest.

 

I got in contact with specific ones, including UND, that seemed like the best fit for me.

 

I got here just before the 4th of July.

 

Q: How did your new teammates react when you arrived? Not only were you starting your first year there as a grad student but also you didn't have a football resume behind you.

 

Taylor: At first a lot of them didn't know. After the article came out in the Grand Forks Herald, some of them came up to me and asked, 'So you really never played football?'

 

But the guys have been great. Today we scrimmaged, and everyone was on the sidelines saying, 'Great punt,' after I hit one. 

 

There are only two punters here, and they love both of us. They're all happy when we hit good balls.

 

Q: What's the biggest adjustment going from kicking on your own in a field to playing with 10 other guys?

 

Taylor: I tried to simulate everything possible when I was training so nothing was a surprise.

 

It's just about fine-tuning, being consistent and making sure everything is game ready when the time comes.

 

Q: I'm sure every college football team has a fake punt play in the playbook, so that has to be different. What's it been like practicing that part of the game.

 

Taylor: I've been playing scout team — scout team running back and wide receiver and cornerback and safety in our practices. I've gotten some experience playing a true position. That has helped a lot with my feeling on the field.

 

As for fake punts, we do have that on the playbook, but we kind of haven't gotten to it yet. We're focusing more on the fundamentals.

 

Q: Have you been hit?

 

Taylor: They keep them off of us. They don’t want the kickers getting injured at all. But I have fun with it, playing scout team, shadowing receivers on their routes and that kind of thing.

 

Q: So you got your bachelor's degree at Denver, which means you're a grad student at North Dakota. What are you studying there?

 

Taylor: I'm in the master's program for mechanical engineering. We start classes on Tuesday, so pretty soon.

 

Q: And if I understand the NCAA rules, correctly, you get five years to complete your athletic eligibility whether you use it or not, so this is the one year you'll be able to play college football, right?

 

Taylor: When you're a full-time student that's when the clock starts.

 

If i could have more, I'd take it, but that's all I've got.

 

Q: So I read in the piece in the Grand Forks paper that you've spent some time in South Dakota with family, but this is the first real time you've spent in North Dakota, correct?

 

Taylor: It's a very different place then where I've visited in South Dakota. But I love grand forks. It's a great town and great people. I'm happy to be here.