GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Trey Smack is a multi-talented, strong-legged, mustachioed athlete.

He was a soccer player at Severna Park (Md.) High. He is a capable golfer who often tees off at UF’s Mark Bostick Golf Course for a round with teammates. Gators fans know him as the kicker who booted a career-long 55-yarder in last season’s win against LSU, matching the third-longest field goal in program history.

 

Smack is also a student of his craft, and like kickers and non-kickers alike, marveled at the 70-year-old field goal made by Jacksonville Jaguars foot specialist Cam Little in a preseason game earlier this month against Pittsburgh.

“A 70-yarder, it’s a long way away,” Smack said. “It’s almost like a kickoff.”

Little’s kick, while not officially the NFL record since preseason games do not qualify, is considered a world record during in-game competition. Little sent his jersey and cleat to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The topic came up as Smack met with reporters on Monday to discuss Florida’s season opener on Saturday against Long Island University.

This is the time of year when Smack attempts to establish a personal record with the season coming up, a gauge for what might be possible should the Gators need his muscular right leg to test the limits.

Smack is considered among the top returning kickers in the country and was named to the Lou Groza Award Watch List. In his two seasons as UF’s primary kicker, Smack has made 35 of 42 field goals (83.3%, fourth-best in school history) and connected on three beyond 50 yards.

Could he make a 70-yarder?

“Yeah, I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll see. My longest ever in the indoor [practice facility] is 69. Any opportunity Coach Napier gives me, I love it.”

Only two kickers in school history have booted field goals longer than Smack’s 55-yarder against LSU: Chris Perkins hit a 60-yarder in 1984 against Tulane, and Caleb Sturgis drilled a kick from 56 yards against Georgia in 2009.

Smack has come a long way since he took over for incumbent Adam Mihalek early in the 2023 season and made a PAT against McNeese.

“That was the most nervous I have ever been for a kick,” he said.

Smack got to see Little up close that season when Little made 4 of 5 field goals – his longest from 49 yards – in Florida’s 39-36 overtime loss to Arkansas. While Little’s 70-yarder against the Steelers went viral, Baltimore’s Justin Tucker owns the NFL record with a 66-yard field goal during the 2021 season.

As for the longest official field goal in the game’s history, there’s a good story there. On Oct. 16, 1976, Swede Ove Johansson of NAIA Abilene Christian kicked a 69-yarder on Homecoming against East Texas State. Like Smack, Johansson grew up as a soccer player.

Johansson made his record kick less than a year after taking up the sport as a 28-year-old who had come to America to play soccer for a professional team in Dallas. He met a girl, enrolled in school, and tried out for the football team.

Johansson, who returned to Abilene Christian and made a 53-year field goal as a 53-year-old in 2001 on the 25th anniversary of his kick, died in 2023, a few weeks before Smack and Little squared off in The Swamp in November 2023.

Smack is not sure if he could make a 70-yarder, even after a Trackman golf simulator credited him with a 72-yard kick over the summer.

But it would be fun to try.

“I would like to see, with a little bit of wind at my back, how far I could get it,” he said.