The Eastern Michigan University football team has a roster from 15 states and some international flavor with four Canadian players on the roster.
The Eagles have one player who can kick a ball great distances, is easily the oldest player on the team and speaks with an Australian accent. His name is Jay Karutz.
Karutz, who is 25-years-old, was born in North Ryde, Australia, in the province of New South Wales. Sports could be said to run in his blood as his father played Australian-rules football for Port Adelaide.
Jay attended high school at Holy Cross College in Australia and played multiple sports, such as Aussie-rules football, cricket, track and field, tennis and rugby. Karutz attended MacQuarie
University for two years before heading to the United States for a kicking camp.
“I was playing in Australia, I was on TV and somebody said, ‘You should try punting,’” Karutz said. “From there I ended up getting an offer from Eastern and played football for them last season and this season and the one after that as well.”
He put his pursuit of earning a doctorate in the next two years on hold to be at the Kohl’s kicking camp. In that camp, Karutz was ranked the 15th-best punter in the U.S. and was labeled the best rugby-style kicker to come through that camp. EMU then gave Karutz the chance to use his new-found skill and get a degree at the same time.
“The reason I came to Eastern was because they gave me the offer to come in early,” Karutz said.
“By coming in early I mean I was able to come in and train in my spot on the team.”
EMU offered a scholarship to Karutz, and he saw action in 2010 with EMU. He made his American collegiate debut in the 2010 season opener against the Army, punting once for 40 yards.
In his first year, Karutz started all 12 games as a punter, recording 68 punts with a 38.7-yard average and 2,632 total punting yards. He also broke the school record for largest punting average in a game when he punted for an average of 49.5 yards against Miami of Ohio, beating the old record of 49.0 set in 1956.
He was named the MAC West special teams player of the week after the same game and earned his first varsity letter.
It is his accuracy at kicking that gets him praise from other teammates.
“He is honestly the best punter I’ve ever seen, and his accuracy is ridiculous,” senior defensive
lineman Javon Reese said.
Karutz has seen the team lose more than win. He admires the ability of this year’s Eagles to look
past the losses and learn from them.
“My favorite thing about this team is their ability to shrug off adversity,” Karutz said. “They seem to be able to ignore everything that’s going on that is not good for them.”
Despite having played a variety of Australian sports that play with different rules, Karutz sees some similarities between those sports and American football.
“In America the team sports are very sort of ‘militarily organized’ so to speak, whereas, in Australia the teams are very much more based on camaraderie, and I think we’ve actually blended a lot of those elements into the team,” Karutz said.
“I think we’re actually starting to have a bit more of that, and when I see that in the team, I think, we will start to be very successful.”
More than 50 international players representing about 10 countries are playing college football at the various NCAA, NAIA and junior college levels for the 2011 season.
