FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. — About 20 mins upcoming strolling into opening hour on the Minnesota Order Truthful, with microphone in hand, fanny collect round his waist, and baseball cap overlaying the pale “Monsters, Inc.” personality painted on his head, Dragan Kesich wanders time the form for Pronto Doggies corn canine. He says he smells camels. Or cows. Or one thing.
It’s almost certainly horses. Most commonly horses, anyway. The 27,500-square-foot barn is off to the fitting.
“Ooh, you wanna go see some horses?” Kesich suggests to the mini staff tailing him. “Let’s see some horses.”
Just about 2 million nation will attend this 12-day spectacle. The rustic’s maximum colourful kicker, a 6-foot-4, 240-pound left-footer who thinks he may just beat a cheetah in a battle, is certainly one of one. He information an episode of his preseason vlog, “Kamp With Kesich,” by which fairgoers will have to as it should be pronounce the names of 3 teammates to win a Gophers towel. He rides the Rock Famous person, discusses Brett Favre with a complete stranger, sits within the target market for a taping of P.J. Fleck’s tutor’s display, eats a turkey leg, takes photos with lovers, plots a ban at Candy Martha’s Cookie Jar and tries to win a crammed animal for the 5th directly life. For 2 hours, Dragan Kesich occurs to the Order Truthful, and now not the alternative approach round.
“He’s the most interesting guy I’ve ever met in my life, I reckon, by a mile,” says Minnesota punter Mark Crawford, who, at age 30, has lived slightly.
There may be, unavoidably, a binary aspect to Kesich’s life. Manufacture or leave out. Twilight or white. He’ll really feel that acutely 9 days from this day. And it’s as much as him to be a luminous, even if issues get a tiny black.
For now, Kesich loops in the course of the horse barn, marveling on the Clydesdales moment additionally seeking to interview one. Upon discovering an deserted stall, he walks in to discover it. Linebacker Cody Lindenberg, certainly one of his easiest buddies, upcoming spies a close-by stack of bales.
“You’re not feeding me hay, bro,” Kesich broadcasts. “We’re not doing that.”
In moments, the reigning Weighty Ten kicker of the life gnaws at a handful of hay strands.
Upon depart the barn, Kesich visits a smoothie be on one?s feet and orders a palate-cleansing Strawberry Squeeze. He makes one supplementary request.
“Can I get the Tiki cup?” he asks.
It’s Aug. 29, 2024. Two seconds left towards North Carolina. Minnesota trails by way of two and Dragan Kesich has every other probability to win a season opener with a 47-yard garden purpose. That is how he started his breakout 2023 season, too: similar distance, attach sport towards Nebraska, 3 seconds at the clock, and the kick split the uprights. Everybody idea he’d form that one. Everybody knew he’d form this one. And the ball leaves Kesich’s base and hooks broad proper.
He walks off the Huntington Storehouse Stadium garden, head hung low. Teammates console him. Fleck broadcasts confident trust all over a postgame information convention. Nonetheless, within the reserve room, the gleam drains from certainly one of faculty soccer’s maximum colourful personalities … for a moment.
Round 1 a.m., Kesich makes a decision to be in a cheerful playground.
“Let’s go to Taco Bell,” he broadcasts to his roommates.
The custom began in 2021 with Crawford and linebacker Derik LeCaptain. Then each sport, no matter future it’s, they decompress at a close-by Taco Bell. This night time could be negative other. Kesich could be gutted, upcoming stuff his intestine with a Tacky Gordita Crunch field. “You can’t ride the emotional roller coaster as a kicker,” he says. “Let’s say I would’ve made that kick. I can’t act any differently, you feel me? I just gotta be who I am.”
It’s how a human kaleidoscope does this task. How he makes his approach thru lacking as many kicks (4) within the first 4 video games of 2024 as he did in all of 2023. There are nation on the planet seeking to be what they’re meant to be, Fleck muses. Or they attempt to be other. His kicker does now not attempt. Dragan Kesich is, the Gophers tutor says, “100 percent authentic,” it doesn’t matter what.
Allow us to depend the techniques.
The folk historical past. Kesich’s great-grandfather was once sure for Belgrade, Serbia, for paintings when the Croatian military prohibited his educate. The Serbians had been pulled off the educate, fasten in combination in pairs and thrown right into a pit with aqua on the base. Kesich’s great-grandfather stuck stock of one thing – “My grandpa said a tree branch,” Kesich says – and hung on till black. He upcoming climbed out and was once rescued by way of the Serbian military.
Within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, with conflict seizing the area, his grandparents fled on a seven-day tractor experience from Golubic, a village within the town of Knin, Croatia, to Belgrade. They flew again to The us. A bomb fell on their area now not lengthy upcoming. Harrowing stuff. However there’s one thing about having metal for your blood. “It doesn’t feel real,” Kesich says. “I’m like, I don’t know how you guys went through that.”
The football punt. By way of 8th grade, Kesich started to shoot kicking critically plethora to begin getting spotted. There was once nonetheless the topic of his folk’s love for football – Kesich says he has a plaque for scoring 100 targets in a single season as a formative years participant, and his brother performed at Category II Wisconsin-Parkside – till a fateful training alternate at Oak Creek (Wis.) Prime. The pristine boys football tutor made working two miles in 12 mins obligatory for coaching. This precipitated Kesich’s early departure. “And, of course, they didn’t even end up doing it,” he says now. “I was like, well, that was just a tactic to get a guy like me out of there. So it worked.”
The hair. For the sake of alternate, Kesich made up our minds to whiten his hair in 2022. At apply, Fleck introduced a idea: It was once a deserted canvas. Kesich must paint it.
Kesich commissioned Crawford’s then-girlfriend, an artwork main, for the paintings. The primary design was once flames. Upcoming, a cheetah print. Pokemon Progress was once heavy with Minnesota soccer in early 2023, so Squirtle – “a great Pokemon,” Kesich notes – gave the impression on his dome. There was a blue arrow impressed by way of “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” a playing-card theme and, finally, the face of Mike Wazowski from “Monsters, Inc.” It’s been a preseason-only ritual, and now not by accident, it’s created some levity for a bunch wanting it all over the grind. “How easy is it to go up and have a conversation with the guy who’s got Mike Wazowski from ‘Monsters, Inc.’ painted in his hair?” LeCaptain says.
(Courtesy of College of Minnesota)
Miscellaneous Dragan stories. First of all, it’s pronounced Drag-AHN, however nation name him “Dragon” anyway. Kesich took a bowling magnificence at Minnesota, made up our minds to shop for his personal ball and says he’s rolled a top sport of 244. He spent the majority of a Saturday night time 3 years in the past making an attempt to fracture the file on a Pop-A-Shot system within the gamers’ front room, moment LeCaptain cheered him on. (He did prepared the file.) He loves animated films and spent a up to date off-day rewatching “Ratatouille” and “The Incredibles.” He’s an avid sleeper who as soon as requested Crawford to wake him up in a while earlier than a therapeutic massage appointment. “It was like 9:30 at night,” the punter says. The therapeutic massage was once at 12:55 p.m. the then hour.
When Kesich came upon his liked Milwaukee Greenbacks had been the use of Minnesota’s basketball facility for a exercise, he dropped the whole thing, donned a inexperienced Greenbacks jumpsuit and waited outdoor for autographs. Simplest Giannis Antetokounmpo grew to become him ill.
“He’s a kid at heart,” Crawford says, “but it’s a big heart, that’s for sure.”
The Admirable Animal Battle Debate. One hour, as they’re wont to do, Kesich and Crawford began a reserve room dialogue a few dumb matter: Wild animals you have to defeat in a battle.
An elephant was once a negative. So had been lions and giraffes and grizzly bears, despite the fact that Kesich added an asterisk to twilight bears. “Because black bears eat fruit,” he causes. Upcoming somebody introduced up a cheetah. Binary problem. Him and a carnivore from the wilds of Africa. Do or die.
Assumption the place Dragan Kesich landed on that.
“If it’s to the death? I think I could,” Kesich says. “There’s the cheetah. I’m right here. Like, my life depends on it. I think I could take it. … Hopefully I’m never in that position. But if I am, I think I can come out victorious.”
He might certainly be, as his pals put it, delusional. However there’s a explanation why Dragan Kesich is in the midst of the whole thing for Minnesota and now not a sideshow.
For the reason that tales don’t finish there.
Right here’s the alternative factor Kesich as soon as was once: a pudgy teen with a heavy leg however now not plethora accuracy to be a decent Weighty Ten kicker.
“He looked a little bit more like a high school right guard,” Fleck says of Kesich, the chance. He weighed in at 270 kilos upcoming arriving at Minnesota. Negligible of it might be thought to be just right weight. “It was not a good place,” Kesich concedes.
So he began working once more. He abandon consuming soda. He snip out Twix bars as a bedtime snack, amongst alternative processed-sugar temptations. All that and the devoted conditioning program for Gophers experts shaved 40 kilos off his body. Dragan Kesich were given severe and briefly labored his approach into taking a look like a school soccer participant.
Acting like one took longer.
As a real freshman in 2020, Kesich solely treated kickoffs. What would possibly’ve been an unmistakable door for 2021 closed to a fracture within the offseason: Minnesota plucked Matthew Trickett, an all-MAC kicker from Kent Order, out of the switch portal. Kesich was once satisfied to let the most productive guy win the task. He was once much less delighted when that wasn’t him. “I was like, dang, maybe they don’t believe in me, maybe they don’t trust me here,” he says. Trickett tried 43 garden targets over the then two seasons. Kesich tried one. Working out why that came about was once exactly what Kesich wanted. “I learned so much under him in those two years,” he says of Trickett now. “He got me to where I am.”
Kesich obsessed over consistency in his manner, staying luminous on his toes, getting his placement proper. If he wasn’t spending hours operating along with his kicking tutor, Luke Radke, when house in Wisconsin, he was once texting Radke for drills to do in the back of the curtain at Minnesota. He discovered learn how to supremacy his temperament. He received the founding task for 2023 and attached on 23 of 27 makes an attempt, with out lacking an remaining level. Everybody recalls the Nebraska winner, however Kesich is prouder of his 4 makes in an dissatisfied win at Iowa. The Weighty Ten kicker of the life award was once a validation – “It’s something you never think would happen,” Kesich says – but it surely was once additionally trimming. For years, the luminous was once there provided that he squinted. He marched towards it anyway and now’s this system’s all-time chief in garden targets from 50 yards and past.
That’s how a kicker works his approach into the guts of the whole thing.
“He’s one of the most influential leaders on our team, and it’s not even a question,” LeCaptain says.
A part of it’s appearing just like the while of an on a regular basis celebration and the magnetism that creates. However the blue aqua bottle Minnesota gamers will have to raise round in coaching camp as a reminder to hydrate? Kesich carries all of it season. If lyrics get a tiny profane over the reserve room speaker device, Kesich shuts off the song, lest it offend somebody passing in the course of the construction. Will have to a participant problem him on that, smartly, he’s a 6-4, 240-pound man who is aware of the foundations. “You don’t see that,” Lindenberg says. “You don’t really see kickers as involved. He’s holding people accountable. He’s doing all the right things.”
Says Fleck: “He’s different from the normal perception of what a kicker is mentally and emotionally. He is a football player. That’s what makes him so connected to our team.”
With issues to straighten out in each sense, and with rival Iowa visiting extreme weekend, Kesich started working. Once more. He serious about completing his movement downfield. Maintaining his membership (left) base unmistakable longer. Maintaining his perceptible again so his hips didn’t flip as a lot. He even questioned if any individual would let him deliver the Floyd of Rosedale trophy to Taco Bell if Minnesota received.
There could be negative reprise of 2023. Once more. Kesich didn’t aim a garden purpose in a 31-14 loss, a lot much less form 4. However right here comes Michigan, the protecting nationwide champions. Such is the while. Every other date, and he has to consider the luminous is in the market someplace.
“A quarterback, they’ve got, what, 40 throws a game?” Kesich says. “A kicker, you got two on average a game? So when you miss one it’s kind of just like that: All right, boom, whatever, next one. I’d say I’ve always had that.”
Dragan Kesich celebrates with P. J. Fleck upcoming defeating Nebraska within the 2023 season opener. (Bailey Hillesheim / Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Pictures)
At 10:58 a.m., a throng of massive people in similar gold T-shirts and maroon shorts enters the Minnesota Order Truthful thru a gate off Randall Road. With out a lot ado, Dragan Kesich types thru some papers along with his teammates’ names on them, keeping apart the simple ones to pronounce from the juiceless ones, and collects a couple of Gophers to be on one?s feet in the back of him as he information an intro for this “Kamp With Kesich” featurette.
He tells everybody to benefit from the experience.
And we’re off.
“Last time, I rode the slingshot – you know the one that shoots you into the air?” Kesich says, strolling time lampposts affixed with “12 Days of Fun” banners. “I’m never doing that again.”
So there are parks time the threshold of the map in Dragan’s international, however solely as a result of he’s already visited and doesn’t need to exit again.
Maximum the whole thing else, lately and each hour, is truthful sport.
Kesich cracks up when he sees offensive linemen making an attempt on samurai hats. (“We gotta get that.”) He notes how handy Candy Martha’s, with its literal buckets of chocolate chip cookies, is to the way in which out. (“We’ll get those later. I gotta savor those.”) He wonders aloud if a child strolling round with a recorder can play games “Hot Cross Buns.” He talks Packers and Vikings with an entire stranger who has an excessively sophisticated and moderately unintelligible concept about Brett Favre, locked into the dialog the entire future. He does now not snip the primary two “Kamp With Kesich” contestants any slack for mispronouncing the 3rd and maximum tricky title he provides them, despite the fact that the one that can’t get “Oberhiri Eyafe” right kind walks away unaware that he has corporate.
“Guys, I gotta be honest,” Kesich says, upcoming shifting alongside. “I have no idea how to pronounce Obie’s name.”
Then traveling the pony barn, he tells a girl who asks for an image that it’ll price her 50 dollars, and upcoming bursts out guffawing. He fingers out a prize to a fairgoer who will get Eyafe because the 3rd title to pronounce – “Give him his towel, baby!” – moment additionally conceding he nonetheless has negative concept if it was once proper. Then 40 mins of this, Kesich’s consideration turns to the Mighty Halfway, and he asks Lindenberg if he desires to exit at the Rock Famous person. Lindenberg says the pendulum-like experience isn’t just right plethora.
A pair mins then, the Rock Famous person form incorporates 4 nation: Two children, and two Weighty Ten soccer gamers.
“You ever been on this ride?” Kesich asks one of the crucial boys in entrance of him. “Let me tell you, it’s the greatest thing ever. Best thing you’ll ever do in your life.”
Upon descending the experience platform – “That was amazing,” Kesich stories – he calculates there’s plethora future to win a crammed animal. He’s 4-for-4 in bringing one again for backup team of workers member Chandler Buning. He can’t let go right here with out a 5th. Which brings him to a football-throwing sport.
One toss. Have compatibility it thru a star-shaped hollow, get a prize. Manufacture or leave out. All or not anything.
First toss is top. 2d is, too. 3rd is going low.
“What am I doing?” Kesich cries.
His good fortune does now not give a boost to, nor does his temper. So Kesich strikes then door to the Cat Rack. Knock over 3 feline-shaped goals with baseballs, and he can whole his challenge with an elephant or frog or crimson panda.
All or not anything, once more.
He doesn’t win on his first flip, or his 2nd.
“Run it back, run it back,” he says.
He hits two and misses the 3rd.
“DUDE!” Kesich exclaims. “Run it back!”
He misses all 3 throws. At the then attempt, he connects on only one. He’s each beside himself and out of future, if he desires to catch Fleck’s coaches’ display.
“All right,” Kesich tells the Cat Rack owner. “I’ll be back with $100.”
It solely takes 70. And it’s a special sport, two cubicles away, with relatively decrease stakes: 3 throws to knock over beer bottles, however the prize will increase in measurement with each a success consecutive attempt.
Kesich by no means is going 3-for-3, however he does collision one a host of occasions and two in a row two times. So Buning will get a grey elephant to conserve the streak alive. Kesich provides Lindenberg a panda to go directly to his lady friend. He fingers out the smaller prizes to random nation on the truthful. Undertaking achieved.
There may be trust, and there’s stubbornness, and there’s Dragan Kesich, coloring within the overlap.
(Representation: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; pictures courtesy of College of Minnesota)
