NCC Spotlight: Football's Tyler Rasche

North Central College punter Tyler Rasche made the D3football.com Team of the Week for the week of Oct. 29.

Rasche was picked as the top-performing punter in Division III for the second straight week for his efforts in the Cardinals' 51-10 victory over Elmhurst College. He finished with a season-best 47.5-yard average on four punts, not allowing the Bluejays to gain a single yard on two return attempts. One of the returns resulted in a fumble that was recovered by .

Congratulations on your second straight appearance on the D3football.com Team of the Week. That's really saying something, so what's clicking for you right now? Everything really, my steps are doing good, made some minor adjustments this week with them but have been hitting the ball really well. My front line is doing a tremendous job of giving me time and my gunners Ryne Rezac and Jeff Stolzenburg are doing a tremendous job of getting down and putting pressure on the returner so they can't get that big return.

Walk me through a perfect punt. What are the steps and what's it feel
like? The perfect punt is one when you know right when you hit the ball it's going to fly. For an ideal punt your steps need to be short and smooth and when you finish through you need to be balanced, and you have that really good hang time so that your team can get down to put pressure on the returner so their only choice is to fair catch the ball.

You know a bad punt's a bad punt before you ever pick your head up to
look, don't you... Yeah, you can tell if it's going to be a good punt or a bad punt right before you pick your head up. You can tell right when it hits your foot, you don't hear that solid sound like you normally would when you hit that good punt. But it's the matter of battling through that and being able to go to the next play and not let the last one bother you.

How much do you look forward to fake punts? Tell us your favorite fake
punt story. I love running fake punt, it puts a huge twist on the opposing return team, because now they can't rush as many players as they would like because they have to worry about the fake. My favorite fake punt was the one we ran aganist Augustana College; I don't think we could have ran that any better than we did besides the holding call — if we take that away. But that had to have be my favorite fake punt, (teammate Jordan) Tassio was wide open and it was the first time I have thrown for a touchdown.

Punters live a different kind of football life, right? Where do you fit
in on the team? Yeah we live a different life because people don't realize how difficult punting really is; they think all you have to do is kick the ball but they don't realize how much work actually goes into punting. At the beginning of the year I had to work hard to make myself fit in. I had to work for my teammates to notice that I am here to help them win football games. I think I fit in pretty well with the team now because I help out the defense by putting the opposing team in bad field position, and even though the offense doesn't like punting I feel like they have confidence in me to to put the opposing team deep into there own zone.