For a lot of football players, the game is baked in from childhood. They grow up around it, live it, and absorb all the little details long before they ever put on a college uniform. Boston Everitt came to Iowa with a very different background, and that unfamiliarity is turning into part of his edge.
The Aussie punter is in his first season playing football, and Iowa special teams coordinator Chris Polizzi thinks that lack of built-in knowledge has actually helped him settle in. Polizzi called Everitt “Boston's a great story.
Somebody that is as green to the game of football, not only college football, not only Big Ten punting here at Iowa. "But naive, I think, is an appropriate word, and he'd be the first one to admit that, "Hey, why are we -- why is it called that?
Why are we doing that? Why are we...,”
That curiosity has shown up as a strength. Polizzi said Everitt wants to learn, absorbs coaching quickly and doesn’t let one bad snap turn into a bad day. He described him as “a sponge,” praised his practice habits, and said he handles mistakes well by figuring out what went wrong and moving on.
“He does as good a job of anybody of compartmentalizing it. What did I make the mistake on and how do I move forward with that?
And just his overall maturity. He's not a young kid that gets too down on himself,” Polizzi said.
The results have backed that up. Polizzi pointed to Everitt’s production, noting, “He's not a guy that, you know, he's hit like 17 of his 27 punts have been inside the 20, and I don't even know how many landed at the one.
And he kind of jogs off and he's like, "Pretty good, right?" I'm like, "Yeah, that's excellent.
That's really good.
That even-keeled approach matters at a spot like punter, where mistakes can snowball fast and the pressure can build quickly. Iowa has already seen that Everitt can handle both ends of it, and Polizzi said he’s the kind of player a coach enjoys working with because he “appreciates the simple zeal of excelling in football.”
For Iowa, that has meant finding another strong leg with the same kind of composure that made Tory Taylor so dependable. Everitt has given the Hawkeyes plenty of the good stuff already, and the way he carries himself suggests there’s more coming.
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