By Daniel Libit

SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE

You walk up to the screen door expecting muscles that brim over his bones and hair that's bleached on the tips and a couple of cheerleaders slinking on his arm. Instead, you get a new frame of mind.

One of the nation's top high school football players is a . . . well . . .

"He's a nerd," says his high school coach, Ken Barreras, with only slight hesitation. "He's your stereotypical nerd. He's the valedictorian. He's in gifted classes."

A nerd, huh? Everybody's ready to pigeonhole Erik Hinterbichler, the Albuquerque High senior named a first-team All-American football player by USA Today. But nobody - not coaches, not his family - knows quite where he fits.

He's a 17-year-old with a 13-year-old's physique. And he has the IQ of a nuclear chemist.

He's a jock with a big mop of slatternly brown hair and pimples and a body that could slip through a floor vent. His eyes sheepishly dart and his words come out slow and library-quiet.

When you approach the screen door of the Hinterbichlers' home in Albuquerque's Nob Hill area, you're looking for one stereotype, think you've found another, and come to the realization that you've found neither.

So let's start over again without the predispositions. Meet Erik Hinterbichler - 4.4 grade point average, author of a 200-plus-page novel, holder of a first-degree black belt and a veteran cellist, who just happens to be able to thump pigskins through the uprights like nobody's business.

And right now, it's that last detail that everyone finds most intriguing.

Inspired by a goat

Erik was just tagging along with his older brother, Kurt. That's how it started. It was the same way he picked up karate.

The Hinterbichlers were tuned to Super Bowl XXV in 1991, rooting for their beloved Buffalo Bills, who were embroiled in a cuticle-muncher with the New York Giants. Down one point with time dwindling, Buffalo kicker Scott Norwood had a chance of a lifetime from 47 yards out. And he blew it - wide right - entering his name in Super Bowl lore as one of the title game's all-time goats.

"We were all mad," says Erik. "It was a chip shot."

Kurt, now majoring in physics at Arizona State, was certain that, given the chance, even he could do better than Norwood. So he went outside and began kicking. And he kept on kicking. After a while, he'd go to the park to practice kicking. And Erik would tag along to shag balls.

Then Kurt decided to attend a kicking camp in Texas the year before he was a freshman at AHS. Of course, his younger brother had to join.

"I was pretty young," says Kurt, "and Erik was the youngest one there. He did just what you'd expect: nothing spectacular considering how small he was."

The boys' mother, Joan Hinterbichler, made Kurt join a Young America Football League team, even though she wasn't all that keen on the sport. Erik merely tagged along.

Kurt went on to letter four years as the AHS kicker. When he was a senior, the Bulldogs' junior varsity kicker was brother Erik. The next year, Erik began his three-year tenure on the varsity as the Bulldogs' kicker.

Hinterbichler wasn't blessed with natural talent, and he still isn't blessed with much strength or power. "You can't dismiss this as a kid who just has a special gift," says Barreras, the AHS coach. Hinterbichler treated kicking like he treated his cello or his homework - with abiding focus and determination.

"The kid was born with something," Joan Hinterbichler says.

The kicking part is all Hinterbichler enjoys about playing football. "I don't like hitting people," he says.

She watched this past season as her son made 17 of 21 field goals, including one of 55 yards against Del Norte in his senior year. He made 18 of 20 extra points. And he punted for a 38-yard average.

Against Manzano, he had to. Hinterbichler was the last Bulldogs defender available to stop a Monarchs kick returner from scoring a touchdown. "I do it if I have to," Hinterbichler says, and he did that time.

But if it was up to him, he'd leave the tackling to someone else. His first attempt led to a broken arm in a sophomore YAFL game.

No takers

Hinterbichler wonders why the college interest is not there. With college signings set to begin Wednesday morning, the state's first USA Today All-American has no scholarship offers.

In January, the University of New Mexico gave him a tour of its facilities and a couple of phone calls, but decided not to offer a free ride to a freshman kicker next season. Wisconsin said it was interested, but hasn't called back. Same for Michigan. Oklahoma showed its feathers, but then decided to offer a scholarship to Josh Roberts, a 6-foot, 165-pound kicker from Malta, Mont. Roberts was USA Today's second-team All-American.

"Northwestern at least gave you the courtesy of calling you to tell you that they are bringing in a junior," Joan Hinterbichler tells her son.

Then, to a reporter:

"We're just surprised," she says. "Everybody said the phone would be ringing off the hook.

"We don't have the money to send him to a school. (Football) is his opportunity to get an education, and right now we're in a holding pattern."

Recently, promise has shown its colors in Harvard crimson. "He just applied to Harvard as a lark," said Erik's father, Karl Hinterbichler. "Admissions found out about his football background." Erik says the Harvard coaching staff has contacted him and told him he's very much wanted up in Cambridge, Mass.

What better person to kick for the nationally prestigious university than a National Merit semifinalist?

But even such promise is tempered by a grasp of reality. Harvard costs $37,000 per year, and Ivy League schools don't give athletic scholarships.

"Karl's take-home pay won't cover $37,000 a year," says Joan Hinterbichler. Football would help.

Other things in life

You'd think Hinterbichler's head would be spinning. After all the football camps, after setting state records, after national recognitions - The New York Times recently interviewed him for a story - there's a chance he might not play college football.

But you'd be wrong if you think he's crushed by that fact.

"(Football) has been good for him," says Joan Hinterbichler. "It's given him a chance to get his nose out of the books. I asked him if next year, if he's under a lot of pressure, would he consider putting the cello away. He said he'd rather put the football away."

According to Erik, "there's way too much attention" placed on sports anyway. He's not going to fuel the fire.

"With all of his scholastic ability and his music," adds mom, "and what is getting him any acclaim is the fact that he kicks footballs. It shows our country's priorities are a little messed up."

Karl Hinterbichler, a music professor at UNM, says, "Football can be an avenue, but it's not the reason for going to a school."

Erik Hinterbichler has other interests. As a high school sophomore, he entered into a mentorship with Walter John Williams, a noted science fiction author from Belen.

Encouraged, Hinterbichler wrote a novel, "The Spirit Stone." It's not quite Harry Potter, but Hinterbichler is shopping it around to publishers with Williams' help.

"Walter said my mentorship is not complete until I get my first rejection letter," Hinterbichler quips.

Someone to help

In Reno, Nev., a man named Ray Pelfrey is still trying to get the word out on a pint-sized kicker from Albuquerque who he says has "excellent leg-speed."

Pelfrey, a former kicker for the Green Bay Packers and the father of ex-Cincinnati Bengals kicker Doug Pelfrey, is not someone you'd expect the perceptive teenager to have in his corner. Pelfrey, decades from his playing days, has dedicated his life to running the nation's largest kicking service and talks like a guy who would walk around the house in cleats. He says 70 kickers who have studied under him have earned college scholarships.

Hinterbichler attended Pelfrey's camp in Tempe, Ariz., last winter. Following this past season, Hinterbichler e-mailed his statistics to Pelfrey, who said he would include them in his kicking newsletter and call some colleges on Hinterbichler's behalf.

This winter, Hinterbichler attended another of Pelfrey's camps, where he worked on kicking off the ground - a skill he wasn't called upon to use in high school.

He recently nailed his first 50-yard field goal without a kicking tee.

"He's being considered highly by some schools," said Pelfrey, who nominated Hinterbichler for USA Today's All-American team.

"But to some degree they are very hesitant. Erik is twice as good now as he was in high school. I have to convince people that he is really outstanding."

Outstanding? Perhaps that's the pigeonhole Hinterbichler fits.

Barreras, the coach who calls his ex-kicker a "nerd" and a "loner," likewise says Erik's one of the most outstanding individuals he has ever met.

"All kids are unique but Erik is in a class by himself," says Barreras. "He has an intense desire to be successful and it shows. My claim to fame with him is that I didn't screw him up."

Erik Hinterbichler's claim to fame is that neither has football.

Print this