VAN METER, Iowa — Connor Guess has no guarantee that he’ll see the field for Iowa State
“It’s kind of the life of a walk-on, fighting, scratching, clawing your way through everything.”
The toughest part, working his way to the top of the depth chart.
“My goal to get on the field was to be a long snapper and my best shot so just trying to help the cyclones anyway I can.”
Steve Wirtel had that position locked down the past four seasons and is now with the Detroit Lions.
“I still text steve almost every day asking him different tips here and there on everything from even snapping to his stuff in the NFL Now.
Leaving a competition to be had in Spring camp for starting long snapper
“Koby Hathcock coming in from Arizona he’s a really good snapper, then Trey Fancher going into his redshirt freshman year, he’s looking really good too. But honestly it’s just a chance to push each other.”
Unfortunately, Covid-19 hit before practices started.
Now athletes aren’t able to use the team facilities so Guess moved back home to Van Meter.
“being at home was definitely nice at first kind of take a deep breath.”
After a quick breather, back to work Connor went, with some help from his dad
“We’d come out here and snap”
But training is all about precision
“Connor would get after me because I was never at the right yardage so we just decided to just mark it out. And it first started with a line.”
Before long, the guess family had a football field in their backyard.
“Some call it crazy others call it determined. My dad, my dad and mom and with the help of some of the neighbors we set up quite the Jack Trice South as we like to call it."
"I guess I had too much time on my hands and one thing grew to another and we ended up with this.”
20-yards long, and perfect for a long snapping Redshirt Sophomore to fine tune his craft.
“All the yardages that I need out here that I need at a true 15-14 yards make sure that’s all straight and really just get better.”
All In hopes of going from snapping at Jack Trice South to Jack Trice Stadium this fall.
“Being a Cyclones fan growing up dreaming of being on that field helping those guys play you know it’s been a dream even helping them in practice on the sidelines cheering them on all that they’re my teammates at the end of the day but it’d mean quite a bit to be able to go out there and play with those guys.”