After an extensive journey, Oliver Straw is finding his footing in his new home.
West Virginia punter Oliver Straw comes to West Virginia through a program called Prokick Australia. With the goal of training athletes to punt and kick in college and the NFL, Prokick has had 190 athletes receive full scholarships to play college football.
“I worked with a company back home called Prokick Australia who pretty much provide Australian punters to American universities,” Straw said. “[They] train them up, get them to do American-style spirals, things like that.”
Straw’s parents are from different parts of the globe — his mother being from England, and his dad being from Australia. They met while the two were in school in the United States in Hoboken, New jersey — a place Straw would return to later on.
Straw would enroll in a six-month exchange program at Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch, New Jersey, where he would first play the game of football.
“I did a six-month exchange to high school in New Jersey,” Straw said. “Played some American football throughout that time, played some basketball. Always wanted to come to the states for college in some way for sports and didn’t know whether it would be basketball or American football.”
Straw would not be allowed to play on the varsity level due to his international status, but it did not stop him from attempting a few punts for the junior varsity games.
“I wasn’t allowed to play varsity football in New Jersey because of a transfer rule in terms of having internationals come over,” Straw said. “I played a JV game, had about three or four punts, but that was about it for the year because obviously in JV they tend to not to want to punt the ball. I played a little of tight end, defensive end.”
Straw first fell in love with basketball, where he played a lot in high school.
“Basketball was my favorite sport growing up. I played at a pretty high level back home, played the varsity roster back home at my school,” Straw said.”
That love for basketball is what Straw first wanted to pursue. He played at a high level in Australia and always imagined he would come to the United States for basketball, not football. That was until a family friend of Straw’s saw him punt a football and said he should give it a try.
“One of my dad’s friends used to work with the Buffalo Bills closely and he had seen me punt a few times and said look you might want to give this a go if you’re interested, if not try basketball,” Straw said. “I developed my kicking more and more and then as I kind of decided football was going to be my way to get here, Prokick presented itself to me.”
With the introduction of Prokick into Straw’s life, it meant he would have to give up basketball and he turned his focus to kicking.
“Had always loved it always will love it, but it’s just something I had to let go of in terms of being able to play,” Straw said. “Prokick recommends that I drop everything in terms of sports that may have potential risk for injury.”
When Straw arrived at Prokick he was one of the youngest there. He said he was with guys who were almost 30 years old, while he was a senior in high school. With so many kickers from Prokick in the college ranks, Straw said they all try to keep in touch with who they trained with in Australia.
“We kind of consider ourselves a brotherhood at Pro Kick so we always try and text each other, see how each other’s going at each school, tips that we might want from game-to-game on how to improve,” Straw said.
When Straw decided to come to West Virginia, he did not have much contact with the coaches until the latter part of the recruitment process. Straw said the Prokick coaches do the majority of the talking, until the coaches finally want to meet with guys like him.
“We typically don’t hear about [recruitment] back home. We leave that to the coaches who run the program at Prokick,” Straw said.
Straw would work with Prokick for almost two years, before being made aware of the opportunity to come to West Virginia.
“Just work with [Prokick] for about a year and a half to two years throughout COVID, high school and just working with them eventually got me the opportunity to come here,” Straw said. “As soon as I heard about [WVU] and had a phone call with the coaches, I was pretty much all in and set on coming here.”
The adjustment period was not as difficult as Straw would have imagined. He said moving around as a kid helped, while the biggest difference was the environments between Morgantown and Melbourne, Australia.
“We’ve bounced around from here, to England, back home to Australia. We’ve always moved around a lot,” Straw said. “We tend to travel, visit family all the time, so I’m used to moving around. I think that helped me in being able to adjust to being away from my family. We’ve always moved around so it’s kind of just the norm for me now.”
“It was different. I hadn’t seen snow honestly until I first got here in January so that was a big adjustment dealing with all that,” Straw said of his move to West Virginia. “It’s pretty similar to home in a way in terms of just the community feel.”
As for on the field adjustments, there was no Friday night lights or high school football games in Australia which could simulate the type of pass rush Straw would see in college.
“We tried to imitate a rush back home, but obviously it’s just nothing compared to what it really is here,” Straw said. “I would the first rush I had probably was back in spring. You try not to think about it, you try to just make it as simple as possible, but obviously it’s in the back of your mind.”
Another adjustment Straw had to make was to the equipment he would wear in a college game, compared to what he had at Prokick.
“Probably the pads and the helmet they’ve been an adjustment,” Straw said. “At pro kick they train us up so we have helmets and pads, but nothing compared to what we have here.”
This week, Straw was named Big 12 Special Teams Player of the Week as a true freshman for his efforts in West Virginia’s loss to Texas Tech. Straw had five punts, averaging 46.6 yards per punt, with a long of 63 yards. Through seven games, Straw has punted the ball 21 times, but said he would rather remain on the sideline if it meant his team had a better chance to win.
“It’s an honor to be named to the Big 12 Special Teams Player of the Week,” Straw said. “It’s an honor, but always want to see the team do better. I’d prefer to not have to punt if that what means is best for the team.”
The future could hold a lot of opportunities for Straw. One of the things West Virginia head coach Neal Brown liked about Straw when he recruited him was his ability to kick with both feet and to have different styles of punts.
Although Straw has not broken out the ability to be a dual-threat punter, his focus is trying to do the best he can each week.
“Obviously, being able to kick with both feet and being able to kick different styles is an advantage in the sport because you have the option,” Straw said. “It just really depends on situationally what’s going on and I think that’s just an advantage of being able to do all those different things. It can change play-to-play, game-to-game on what I do.”
