Former Wolfpack kicker Stephen Hauschka has vaulted himself into the national spotlight. An improbable sequence of events has taken him from being a high school soccer and lacrosse player to starting for the Baltimore Ravens in the National Football League.

 Hauschka, who kicked for N.C. State during the 2007 season, is the only kicker on the Baltimore Ravens roster after veteran Matt Stover was not resigned following the 2008 season. Hauschka said he never thought he would be in this position in the NFL. ”It wasn’t really until after the N.C. State year,” Hauschka said. “I had a good season there at N.C. State obviously and I thought it was a possibility after that, once the coaches started calling. But until then it was sort of just a distant dream.”  Hauschka has always played sports, but said he had never gotten into kicking until he was already a sophomore at Middlebury College, a Division III school located in Vermont. ”I didn’t actually start kicking until my sophomore year of college,” Hauschka said. “I played soccer and lacrosse in high school, but didn’t start kicking footballs until my roommates said they needed a kicker [at Middlebury] and said I should go out for the team.”  And Hauschka didn’t just kick; he kicked well. As soon as Hauschka stepped onto the field, the coaches knew they had stumbled onto something. ”My kicking coach at Middlebury … when we first started working together my sophomore year of college, he said I had an NFL caliber leg,” Hauschka said. Hauschka would kick his final three years at Middlebury and finish 20-28 on field goals and 35-40 on point-after-touchdowns, breaking the school’s record for single season and career field goals in the process. After he graduated, Hauschka began to weigh his options. ”I ended up poll-calling a bunch of coaches. I targeted programs that had lost kickers through graduation or maybe their kicker just didn’t have a good year. N.C. State was one of those programs,” Hauschka said. “My kicking coach from Middlebury knew coach [Jerry] Petercuskie from Boston College. My kicking coach vouched for me and was able to get me a walk-on chance at N.C. State.” When he got to N.C. State as a graduate student, Hauschka was faced with a tough battle for the starting job with current kicker Josh Czajkowski. By the end of training camp, though, Hauschka had leaped another hurdle in his journey by winning the starting job. ”His mental preparation is totally like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Czajkowski said. “Coming from kicking just since sophomore year, that’s just huge. And he’s been leaps and bounds since then.”   Once again, Hauschka excelled in his play. He connected on 16 of 18 field goals and led the ACC in field goal percentage. He was 8-8 on field goals over 40 yards, including a long of 49. His play earned him national recognition, as he was a semi-finalist for the Lou Groza Award, the honor given to the best college kicker in the nation for that season.  Once again, Hauschka came to a crossroads after he was done at State. But he soon came to find out his performances had been catching the eyes of NFL scouts. ”A bunch of coaches had called and right after the draft I got signed by the [Minnesota] Vikings,” Hauschka said. Hauschka said he learned a lot from that experience, and he was able to kick in two preseason games while the Vikings rested starter Ryan Longwell. Then, after being put on waivers by the Vikings at the end of preseason, the Ravens, impressed with what Hauschka had done in the preseason, signed him. After a brief stint on the practice squad, he was put on the 53-man roster to back up Matt Stover in what would be the veteran’s final season. He connected on his first field goal attempt, a 54 yarder, during that year. Now Hauschka is the only kicker on the Ravens roster and has started the season four of five on field goals and 16 of 16 on extra points. Czajkowski said he knows what a feat Hauschka has accomplished. ”That’s just a hard thing to do, to go from not kicking for a long time and gradually working his way up to where he is now,” Czajkowski said. “The mental preparation that he has is just unparalled by anybody I’ve seen.” And after successfully completing an unlikely journey to the National Football League, Hauschka said he is extremely thankful for the position he’s in. ”I didn’t think it was ever going to happen,” he said. “It was really a dream come true.”