WXXV: Student Athlete of the Week: Bart Edmiston
With the high school football season officially kicking off this week, it only makes sense that our first WXXV Student Athlete of the Week goes to a gridiron star, even if you’ve never heard his name, until now.
Ocean Springs specialist Bart Edmiston is a five-star punter and a four-and-a-half-star kicker, finally getting the recognition he deserves.
“What keeps me in the game of football? I like it.” Being a football junkie comes naturally to Bart Edmiston, who is keeping it in the family as an Ocean Springs specialist. “My dad, which is also Bart Edmiston – I’m a junior – he kicked at the University of Florida 1992-96, and then I’ve always been like, he’s always wanted me to kick and then I started it going into my eighth-grade year.”
Generational skills passed down from father to son and junior puts them to good use for the defending Region 4 Class 6A champs. Coach Blake Pennock said, “As far as high school football, when you have a kicker, you can trust in, that’s worth its weight in gold. Bart, he’s a great player, he’s a good kicker, he’s a punter, he can kind of do all of it, and get kickoffs back into the end of the endzone which is a huge deal. We always know that we can trust that good things happen in the kicking game when he’s back there.”
The family genes obviously run deep, but Bart isn’t the only Edmiston kicker on the team. His younger brother Brooks is a sophomore for the Greyhounds, which certainly has its perks. “Last year I was the only kicker on the roster, so I had to do everything by myself, be my own ball boy, go fetch all my balls, but now, having my little brother, he came up, he’s in tenth grade, he’s a kicker and punter also, but now I’m like, I make him do all my duties for me, I make him go fetch the balls, he’s my ball boy now, kinda mean, but it’s brotherly love.”
But don’t let the tough love fool you, Edmiston is a leader both on and off the field, whether he realizes it or not. Long snapper Jarrett Scott said, “I always knew I could long snap, but I never did it. I would always play safety or corner, but then this past year I took off for some classes and then I came back was working with Bart just a little bit with long snapping and asked him if he thinks I could do it and he worked with me over the summer and gave me the confidence I needed to try out and ever since then I’ve been long snapping for him and he’s been helping out and been an encouragement and so I appreciate him.”
As fate would have it, Bart and Jarrett even share the same birthday, adding to the close bond they already share, especially when it comes to practice. “It’s always a good feeling scoring points, hearing the crowd cheering my name, or just cheering after I make it. But at practice you always hear like kickers do nothing, it is true. I barely do nothing, it’s probably one of my favorite parts. I can just walk around talking to everyone, drink water whenever I want.”
Perhaps too much water, or whatever form of H20 he can get his hands on. Edmiston says the team managers are always on his case about stealing all the ice out of the coolers, hence his new nickname, Ice Man. “Ice man because I got ice in my veins to make my kicks because I like to eat ice. Put it in there, yeah.”
All jokes aside, Edmiston is as clutch as they come, addicted to those big-time moments and the adrenaline rush that comes with them. “Why I always do it, it’s like probably a baseball player when they hit a homerun. It’s just like you always want that feeling when I hit a good punt or a good field goal. I just chase that again.”
The Greyhounds will continue to chase that feeling Thursday as they officially begin their 2022 football season. They hit the road to take on the Clinton Arrows in a rematch of last year’s double-overtime thriller which Ocean Springs won 45-44.
