Local girl gets her kicks

BY ERIC LINDBERG
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

With her left hand firmly grasping the football, Jessica Escalante waves her father down the field a bit farther before she launches a tight, arching spiral that lands neatly in his hands.
The 13-year-old La Colina Junior High student has been sending off rockets like that since she turned 9 and her father took her up to Santa Maria for a local football competition.

Thursday, she’ll set off for the national championships of the NFL Pepsi Punt, Pass and Kick program in Indianapolis as one of the top three girls in her age group nationwide.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, each participant gets a shot at placekicking, heaving and dropkicking a football as far as they can. Scoring is based on the combined distance from those three events, with an emphasis placed on accuracy as well.
“I would like to get at least over 300 [feet],” Escalante says as she gets in a few extra kicks and tosses at the Santa Barbara Family YMCA.
Her distance at the qualifying competition in San Francisco, 285 feet, 8 inches, is her best effort thus far.
After the competition on Saturday, participants will be highlighted during the halftime show of the Indianapolis Colts—San Diego Chargers playoff game on Sunday, with the winner receiving recognition on national television.
It seems like quite a lot to swallow for someone who just became a teenager, but Escalante knows how to take it in stride.
“Actually, I do better when a lot of people are watching for some reason,” she says. “The crowd kind of pumps me up.”
Escalante has always had a knack for athletics. Her father, Amador, a big soccer fan, bought her a ball, built a goal and started coaching her at a young age.
“She has a natural left foot,” he says.
But even as much as she enjoyed booting the soccer ball around the back yard, her proclivities started to shift a bit when her father brought home a junior-sized basketball hoop.
“She got her soccer ball, took it over to the hoop and started shooting,” her father says. “…My wife said to me, I think you picked the wrong sport.”
Now a basketball and track athlete at La Colina, Escalante plans to stick with those sports through high school, hopefully college, and maybe even wind up in the WNBA.
“My parents never really forced me to do sports,” she says. “I’ve just always kind of been attracted to them.”
Back at age 9, when she was still lacing on cleats and strapping on shin guards, her dad spotted an advertisement in the newspaper about a local football competition open to both boys and girls.
So after a soccer game one weekend, they headed up to Santa Maria for the first round of the NFL’s punt, pass and kick program. Right off the bat, she took first place in her age group.
“My very first score was 146,” Escalante says.
Every year since then, she’s worked her way through a series of local and regional stages to the sectional competition in San Francisco, her score climbing steadily. In sixth grade, she reached the national championships, held in Indianapolis that year as well, but placed a disappointing fourth.
“I feel more confident than I felt the first year,” she says. “I think I have an advantage because I know the field.”
She attributes her ever-lengthening personal record to her growth and increasing strength, along with the help of just a little weight training.
“I don’t want to lift too much and get too buff,” she says.
After stretching out a 100-foot measuring tape with the help of her father, Escalante warms up with a few practice tosses. Then, stepping behind the end of the tape, she heaves her first throw.
About 105 feet and just a few feet off center. She shakes her arm, rears back and launches a 115-footer.
“She’s a natural,” her father says.
Despite her success, Escalante is no braggart.
“I try to keep humble and not tell people,” she says.
She has plenty to be humble about off the field as well, with a 4.0 GPA and her position as student body president. She has her sights set on attending college, perhaps UCSB, USC or Duke.
“I kind of like dealing with people and helping them in any way I can,” Escalante says. “If I had to pick a major, I think I’d do sociology.”
But for now, she’s just focusing on sending that ball as far down the field as possible.