Steven Clark got his feet wet when it comes to punting on the collegiate level last year.

Auburn’s lanky punter was pressed into duty as a freshman in the 2010 campaign, platooning with senior Ryan Shoemaker at the whims of special teams coordinator Jay Boulware.

The results were mixed at best: 34.9 yard average over nine kicks with a long of 42 and two downed inside the 20-yard line.

With Shoemaker graduating, it was Clark’s show coming into this year.

And Boulware made sure to put a word in his ear from the early going: consistency.

“Who doesn’t want to be consistently good?” Clark said. “That’s what you strive for, what you shoot for is to hit your best kick every single time you go out there. It’s a process. It takes a lot of practice. A lot of time.

“It’s definitely a mental game.”

A couple of inches can mean the difference between a shank and a 60-yarder. A change in the wind can render a good kick worthless. A subpar punt from earlier in the game — or season — can bleed into your mind and lead to more troubles.

None of that was a problem for Clark this year.

This year, he was a rock.

The sophomore became the first Ray Guy Award finalist in Auburn history, averaging 40.5 yards a kick, downing 32 of his 69 punts inside the 20 and booting 12 kicks of 50 yards or longer.

But the horizontal aspect of Clark’s game wasn’t the impressive part. He has the gift of launching his kicks into the stratosphere, regularly clocking in around 5 seconds in hang time.

That allows the Auburn coverage team to get in the returner’s face and not allow a runback. Opponents returned only 10 kicks for 62 yards against the Tigers this year.

“He did a phenomenal job of working his way into a more consistent player,” Boulware said. “He's not perfect. He's got a long way to go. But his development throughout the course of the year was really, really what we're looking for our punters to do.”

Don’t expect the quiet, unassuming Clark to get too excited about his progress, though.

He can’t really see what all the fuss is about.

“I’ve just been doing my job,” Clark said. “I struggled, to say the least, last year. That’s part my fault because I wasn’t kicking as well. But I really didn’t do anything special this year.”

Now what’s really special, Clark said, is the way his coverage team had his back.

He brought up a 54-yard punt against Alabama in the Iron Bowl, one that would have easily bounded into the end zone for a touchback had Onterio McCalebb not batted the ball dead at the 3-yard line.

Clark ran down the field pumping his fist after that kick. It almost helped him forget the 10-yarder that glanced off the side of his foot in the first quarter.

“I was pissed,” Clark said with a smile. “I’m always upset when stuff like that happens. I expect more out of myself than probably everybody else out there. I think I ended up with something like a 40-yard average (42.2), which is kind of saying something after a 10-yard punt.”

The next bridge for Clark to cross, Boulware said, is improvements in his directional game.

Angling away from returners, nestling kicks into the sideline, working on the coffin corner so his coverage men don’t even have to down it.
No big deal, Clark said. Everybody else does the tough part.

“I’ve just got to know which way I’m supposed to kick it,” Clark said. “Everybody else is blocking different sets and defenses and stuff like that.

“My job is pretty simple relative to everyone else.”