Hampton long snapper Braeden Ballintine hits his target ahead of freshman season at Cal (Pa.)

By: John Grupp
Saturday, July 6, 2024 | 1:59 PM

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Hampton’s Braeden Ballintine was about 10 years old when his dad challenged him to try something with a football.

Throw a spiral between your legs while looking upside down.

“Before I even started playing football,” Ballintine said, “he was trying to mess around and show me how to snap a little bit.”

Ballintine’s first attempts at long-snapping, a job his father Brad performed at Hampton two decades earlier, were understandably erratic and wild.

“I was all over the place,” he said.

But the 6-foot-2, 215-pound Ballintine used years of training and practice to become one of the top long snappers in the state and earn a scholarship to Cal (Pa.), where he will be a freshman in the fall.

“I just slowly started to fall in love with it,” he said. “I really tried to perfect it as much as I could.”

Long snappers have only one job — get the ball quickly and accurately to the punter and to the holder on extra-point and field-goal attempts.

Ballintine, who was solely a long snapper in high school, perfected his craft while attending Kohl’s Kicking Camps as far away as Tennessee and working with long-snapping coach Trey Harper of Special Teams U., a Wisconsin-based training facility.

The work paid off. Ballintine was ranked as the No. 3 snapper in Pennsylvania and No. 62 in the nation in the Kohl’s Class of 2024 national long snapper rankings.

Harper, who was a long snapper at Duquesne and Michigan, said Ballintine has made huge strides doing a thankless job often performed in relative anonymity.

“He went from a decent high school snapper who was able to do his job … and he has developed into probably one of the most college-ready snappers that I’ve worked with,” Harper said. “His consistency has improved. His size, his work ethic.”

Ballintine started as Hampton’s long snapper each of the past two seasons, and Pennsylvania coaches took notice. He attended Big 33 tryouts in January and May, and did well enough to earn a spot as the West long snapper in the PSFCA East-West Big School All-Star Game on May 19 at Cumberland Valley. The West lost 15-14, but Ballintine did his job.

“It was a really good atmosphere,” he said. “It was really fun.”

Ballintine committed to Division II Cal (Pa.) in January. He also weighed offers from Sacred Heart, Saint Francis and Robert Morris. He reports to Cal (Pa.) on Aug. 11 and is expected to be the Vulcans’ starting long snapper this season.

“I talked to coach (Gary) Dunn at the spring game and he said the starting spot is mine,” Ballintine said. “It’s mine to lose. They have no other snappers on their roster.”

Ballintine has come a long way from his early days snapping the ball. He spent many hours working by himself, snapping about 15 yards through a 2-foot by 2-foot target made of PVC pipe that his dad built for him.

He attended his first camp as a freshman and the following year, he was invited to Kohl’s National Invitational Scholarship Camp in Gatlinburg, Tenn. Over the years, he lowered his snap time from 1.1 seconds to 0.7 seconds.

“Everything he’s done has been at an extremely high level,” Harper said. “He is one of the better snappers in the country, without a doubt in my mind.”

Because long snappers get little notice unless they do something wrong, Ballintine said consistency is “always the key.”

“What it really (comes down to) is repetition and muscle memory,” he said. “You want to not even think about the snap. It has to be effortless, where you don’t even have to think about what you are doing. It just happens.”

Tags: Hampton