Chapman hopes ‘brutal’ journey leads to Ray Guy Award

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Auburn’s Oscar Chapman hopes ‘brutal’ journey leads to Ray Guy Award

Published: Aug. 25, 2022, 9:30 a.m.

8-9 minutes

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Oscar Chapman’s days started at 4 a.m. and were nonstop for the next 13 hours.

He’d wake up. He’d take a boxing class. Then he’d hit the weight room and run. That was followed by hours of just kicking — and kicking, and even more kicking. Then he’d drive an hour and a half to the beach for his day job at an event management company, helping set up fencing and other staging for events.

That was his routine at least four days a week while training at Prokick Australia, the academy that has helped place nearly 200 Australian athletes with American college football programs and produced six Ray Guy Award winners. Chapman hopes to become No. 7 this season at Auburn.

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“Really want to put myself out there and get the Ray Guy Award,” Chapman said. “Best punter award; I want to push for that. I had a pretty good season last year. Just had a few games that let me down. So just want to really keep that consistency going through the whole year.”

Chapman was solid for Auburn last season, which was his second with the Tigers. He averaged 44.12 yards on 57 punts in 2021, finishing 32nd nationally and second in the SEC in average distance. He was also top-20 among FBS kickers in net punting (41.79 yards per attempt). Chapman also dropped 23 of his punts inside the opponent’s 20-yard line, as he provided a major advantage for Auburn in the field-position battle, especially late in the season when the Tigers’ offense sputtered; his consistency on special teams often helped put the defense in more advantageous situations.

But Chapman is eyeing even more this fall, his third season as Auburn’s punter. He was selected to the preseason All-SEC second team by both the media and the league’s coaches, behind fellow Australian Nik Constantinou of Texas A&M, and although he was left off the preseason watch list for the Ray Guy Award, Chapman and those within Auburn’s program believe he has a legitimate shot this season.

“We have the best punter in the country,” special teams coordinator Roc Bellantoni said.

Chapman’s journey to this point, though, required sacrifice. After graduating from Prince Alfred College, where he played Aussie rules football, he chose to pursue an opportunity with the Prokick Australia program. He moved from out of state to begin his training, and because his family couldn’t help offset the cost of the program, he had to find a job to help pay his way.

That’s where the stint with an event management company on the beach came into the picture.

“It was a hard job,” Chapman said. “I wasn’t the biggest guy. I was working with a lot of bigger, older dudes. It was very physically demanding of me.”

But it helped ease the financial burden of chasing an opportunity to play college football and earn a scholarship in the United States, even if it made for many painstakingly long days, between driving to and from work, the physical labor of the job and the rigors of training with Prokick.

“It’s pretty brutal,” Chapman said. “You get there (to Prokick) and you work for four-odd months by yourself. You’re out there practicing, but you’re kind of left to yourself with a bunch of footballs, and you just kick. You just kick, kick, kick, and you train as much as you can just like they do here…. You do that and you get better and you get better, you get better. And as soon as you get to the point where you’re comfortable kicking a ball, the coach goes, ‘Yeah, let’s start working you.’ You get really specific with it.”

Eventually, the interest from college programs began to roll in. Auburn was already familiar with the Prokick program, which helped place Arryn Siposs with the Tigers in 2018. Siposs spent two seasons as Auburn’s starting punter before declaring for the NFL Draft. Siposs is currently with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Chapman signed with Auburn in 2020 and arrived on campus that August amid the early months of the pandemic. That made for an interesting acclimation for Chapman, who was in a new country and playing a largely unfamiliar sport nearly 10,000 miles from his family and fiancée back in Adelaide, South Australia.

“It was like fall camp or whatever when I first got here; didn’t really understand anything,” Chapman said. “Kind of just sitting back, watching, learning.”

Fortunately for Chapman, toward the end of fall camp that year, he was able to meet up with Siposs, who spent some time training in Auburn before the NFL season, as well as Max Duffy — another fellow Australian punter who was at Kentucky. The three chatted, and punted, but mostly it gave Chapman an opportunity to ask them about their experiences playing college football and adjusting to life in the South after moving from Australia — and the best advice on how to “have fun while doing it.”

Those conversations helped put Chapman at ease, and his transition that fall was seamless, though certainly eye-opening.

Auburn’s first game that year—with an SEC-only schedule thanks to the pandemic—came against Kentucky at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Attendance was capped at 17,490 due to health and safety measures — just 20 percent of the stadium’s usual capacity.

It was the largest crowd Chapman, who punted twice and averaged 43 yards per attempt in the Tigers’ 29-13 win, had ever played in front of.

“(It) was amazing for me,” he said. “…Even though the stadium didn’t look as packed as it normally is, I looked around, I was like, ‘This is crazy.’ Band’s going. Big loud band. Student section going crazy. I was like, ‘This is incredible.’”

That feeling was amplified last season, when stadiums across the country returned to full capacity. Auburn’s trip to Penn State was particularly awe-inspiring to Chapman. The Nittany Lions packed 109,958 fans into Beaver Stadium for their annual White Out game.

Then the Iron Bowl against Alabama at Jordan-Hare at the end of the season upped the ante even further.

“We played Alabama here as well, and that was like, ‘This is the peak of everything. This is insane.’ Like, I was just so happy to be here. This is it.”

Off the field, Chapman has acclimated to his surroundings in Auburn too. Kicker Anders Carlson said he quickly latched on to the rest of the special teams group and fit in well when he first arrived. He even has a car now, which he has used to make the trip to the World Market in Tiger Town, where there’s a small section of Australian offerings — including vegemite. Though he has also become well-acquainted with Southern food, like barbecue.

“You guys have briskets and pulled pork, you’re having all these meats,” Chapman said. “I was like, this is not how I’ve eaten it before. It’s kind of just steaks and chickens and things like that. And then green beans or collard greens or something? That’s on like every meal I’ve eaten. And I’m just like, ‘I don’t really know what this is, but I guess I’ll eat it.’”

Settled into his home on the Plains and fully adjusted to the college game, Chapman is ready to deliver his best season yet. His goal throughout the offseason was remaining consistent, trying to avoid a couple of the uneven performances from a year ago—like at LSU and South Carolina—and just generally limiting returns on his punts. It’s about accuracy, and hangtime, and trusting his coverage unit to be in the right spot when the ball comes down.

“He’s one of the best punters in the nation for sure, if not the best,” Carlson said. “In terms of kicking, he’s been killing it.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.