Jude Kelley was still in high school when the kicker attempted to make sure the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football coaches recruiting him were suitably impressed.
Kelley, an All-America third-team selection by Kohl’s special teams camps as an Allatoona High School senior in 2020, told UTC head coach Rusty Wright and assistant Mike Yeager, who was the Mocs’ special teams coordinator at the time, that he could kick left-footed.
“I had been kicking kickoffs lefty because we were trying to screw with people, and I guess some of our coaches had told them I could kick lefty,” Kelley said recently. “They asked me to that one day, and I was like, ‘Absolutely, of course,’ because you want them to think you can do as much as possible, and that was the first and last time I ever have.”
Kelley never really thought about it again as he remained in the Atlanta area to begin his college football career and spent two seasons at Georgia Tech, where his highlights included all five onside kickoffs he attempted being recovered by the Yellow Jackets. After the 2022 season, though, he transferred to UTC and handled kicking duties for the Mocs in 2023, going 8-for-10 on field-goal attempts and 17-for-18 on point-after tries before his season ended after four games due to injury.
However, a couple of weeks before this year’s season opener at Tennessee, Wright approached Kelley and asked if he could still use his left foot — not to kick this time, but to punt. Wright probably would have been OK if Kelley had just said no, but wanting to impress the coaches, the 6-foot-2, 187-pounder from Acworth, Georgia, said he could — and immediately started practicing, just in case.
“At that point, there were two people on Earth that are under the assumption I can punt lefty, and that’s our head coach and our defensive coordinator,” he said of Wright and Yeager, who took over the top defensive role ahead of this season. “I asked Coach Wright the week before we played Tennessee if we were planning to do it, and part of me was expecting him to say, ‘No, we’ll roll it out next week.’ Of course, he’s like, ‘Hell yeah, absolutely.’
“I thought it was something that we’d save for conference play or something. I love doing it and I’m comfortable doing it now, but I was terrified back in August.”
It’s not as though Kelley, who was punting left-footed to save his right leg and normal routine for kicking, did a bad job in his extra role on special teams. He averaged 38.6 yards on 12 left-footed punts, including a 50-yarder in UTC’s 17-10 win at East Tennessee State University on Oct. 5. He was also still handling kickoffs, PATs and field goals for the team, stepping into a leadership role for a unit that lacked experience with the graduation of Clayton Crile, who was the team’s punter last season and moved into placekicking duties after Kelley’s injury.
The past two games, the punting has been taken off Kelley’s plate as freshman Heath Jehu has proven capable by ranking second in the Southern Conference at 44.5 yards per punt this season. Kelley still has kickoff duties because injuries have slowed senior Alen Karajic (a former prep standout at East Hamilton who transferred from Jacksonville State after four years as a starter) and freshman Gray Kelley (Jude’s younger brother), but that hasn’t kept him from excelling in the scoring department.
On Monday, he was named the SoCon special teams player of the week for the second straight time, following up a 7-for-7 showing (two field goals, five extra points) in a 41-10 road win against Furman with a 7-for-7 showing (three field goals, four extra points) in a 37-5 home win against Wofford. This month, he has twice matched his career long with 48-yard field goals at ETSU and versus Wofford, and he has not missed on 20 PATs this season while going 9-for-14 on field-goal attempts (with another one blocked).
Karajic could be back in the next couple of weeks, which could free up Kelley from some kicking duties, but that could also mean there’s more punting in his future.
“Having a guy like Jude makes your offensive coordinator feel good that you don’t have to stress over getting points,” Wright said. “There’s a lot of times you go on the road, the best thing you can do is just go get points and feel comfortable about it and settle everybody down. It hasn’t always been that way, and he’s done a great job.
“All those guys have done a great job. I’ve got a new holder (Jehu), a new long snapper (Ethan Myers), and nobody says a word about them, but they’ve been really, really good this year.”
Kelley has enjoyed leading that group, which has allowed him to be with his brother for the next couple of seasons and work together for a team that is 4-3 overall, 3-1 in the SoCon and ranked 19th in the Stats Perform FCS Top 25 heading into Saturday’s 4 p.m. homecoming game against Virginia Military Institute (0-7, 0-3).
UTC has shown progress over the course of this season on offense, defense and special teams, although nobody was perfect in the Mocs’ 0-3 start. That included Kelley, who missed five of his first nine field-goal attempts. Like the Mocs, though, Kelley has been resilient, and it’s paying off now.
“There’s many, many places where everybody would be down and it would get toxic very, very quickly, and that’s just not the case here,” Kelley said. “Everybody buys into what we’re being told and what we’re being made to do, and that just makes it way more fun and rewarding when it starts to come together.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.