Louis Hedley is well-aware his tattooed body can draw “an odd look every now and then.”
Even in his native Australia, he says, where tattoos are more prevalent than in America, the Miami Hurricanes’ new 6-foot-4, 235-pound muscle-strapped punter catches people staring at the ink across his throat and neck.
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“I used to own a tattoo shop in Indonesia,” Hedley, a lifelong Australian Rules Football player, told The Athletic on Monday night by phone from his home in Perth, where he’s training six days a week before beginning classes at the University of Miami on May 20.
“I lived in Bali for two years. I was just coming and going from there, living there, pretty much in the jungle, owning the tattoo shop. So I was always in the tattoo shop getting tattoos. I’m not really sure how many I have. They’re all sort of combined. Both my arms, chest, torso, they all link up to one.”
Hedley’s appearance made him a viral star last week here in America when he signed his national letter of intent to attend Miami about 13 hours before National Signing Day actually got underway in the Eastern time zone.
The New York Post called him the “most intimidating punter you’ve ever seen.”
SB Nation declared: Miami just signed your dad’s scariest coworker to play punter.
Even ESPN “SportsCenter” anchor Scott Van Pelt felt compelled to feature Hedley in his nightly segment The best thing I saw today. “Look at him,” Van Pelt quipped. “Swag on a billion.”
Not only did Hedley’s social media accounts on Twitter and Instagram pick up thousands of followers, but a six-second introduction video Miami’s football department posted on its Twitter account also got more than 175,000 views.
That was close to 100,000 more views than the player introduction video former Ohio State quarterback Tate Martell received after Miami announced his addition to the roster Feb. 2.
Even a local newspaper in Australia took notice of the reaction Hedley got in America, writing how the U.S. was frothing over the former Peel Thunder Football Club semi-pro player.
What did he think of all the attention?
“It’s pretty surreal, to be honest,” said Hedley, 24. “I’ve been reading all the comments and stuff and it’s pretty funny. I didn’t realize it was going to blow up that much, go viral. I can’t really believe how big it got. It’s all fun and games.
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“A lot of reporters have sort of tried to make me out to be some sort of mean, bad dude. It’s been played up. I’m not sure why. A lot of people judge me by the way I look, but I’m the complete opposite. I’m a pretty down-to-earth dude. I hope people realize that when I get to Miami. The picture that went viral makes me look angry. I’m the complete opposite. I can’t wait to get over there and show people what I’m like. I’m not a gangster. I’ve just got tattoos pretty much. People will realize that once I’m there.”
A lifelong kicker and athlete
Off the field, Hedley said, he’s a warm, fun-loving person.
He’s a father to an 11-month-old son named Loki. He says he loves kids and spent a lot of time playing with underprivileged youth in his time in Bali.
What Hedley says he is on the field — and from all accounts from coaches who worked with him in Australia and those on Miami’s staff — is a hungry, hard-working individual who is not built like many other college punters, but driven to use the three years of eligibility he will have at UM to make it to the NFL.
Before he signed with Miami, Hedley played just one season of American football at City College of San Francisco in 2017. He averaged only 38.6 yards per punt, but that number is misleading considering he often was brought in to make short punts and pin opponents well inside their 20-yard line.
At CCSF, Hedley also displayed his freakish athleticism on a pair of fake punts, rumbling for 56 yards on one and 22 on another.
“I’ve been kicking a football since I could pretty much walk,” Hedley said. “My dad got me a football when I was a kid and I’ve played Australian Rules football my whole life. I got up to a semi-pro point and I didn’t get drafted. So I didn’t play at a professional level. I just played sort of for fun and worked as a scaffolder here and there. Eight years later, the opportunity to join Prokick Australia popped up and I had a tryout with them go right. They told me I had a future in college football.
“I knew if I put my mind to it, I had a chance to make the NFL. I talked to my parents and we decided to give it a shot. I had a bit of money saved. So I moved to San Francisco and I haven’t looked back.”
Nathan Chapman, who has been the head punting coach with Prokick Australia since 2007, played eight years in the Australian Football League and signed a contract with the Green Bay Packers in 2004.
He along with others at Prokick Australia have helped 75 Australian-born kickers earn college scholarships over the past 12 years, including four Aussies who have won five of the last six Ray Guy Awards given to the nation’s top college punter. That list includes Tom Hornsey, Tom Hackett, Mitch Wishnowsky and Michael Dickson, who is a Pro Bowl punter with the Seattle Seahawks.
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“Louis trains in both spiral and rollout punts, but works mostly on the spirals,” Chapman said. “He can do the rollouts in his sleep. We trained three days a week and five in the gym before he went to City College of San Francisco. He can kick a 5.3 (hang time) on spirals with 50-plus yards and his rollout punts can go 55 (yards) in the air.
“He’s big for any punter, but he loves the gym and he has a big frame. So, having six months of studying at CCSF and hitting the gym helped put the size on. He works hard as you would want him to.”
As an Australian Rules football player, Hedley was “a backman, a defensive player.” His responsibilities included a lot of hitting, but also kicking the ball deep downfield.
“It’s a contact sport and I love hitting people,” he said. “I always had to kick out. So, if a position scored a point, I’d kick it out of the box. My job was to always have a good, long accurate kick. So, punting fits perfectly.
“I do find myself fortunate. Everything that’s happened the last two years, I’m so glad I’ve got a crack. I hope that other people see this, too, and realize they can do it.”
Connecting with the Canes
Chapman said after Hedley passed their initial assessment tests a couple years ago (kickers are required to kick 45 yards with a 4.5 hang time to be invited into his program), Chapman reached out to Miami’s coaches to encourage them to give Hedley a look at CCSF.
Former Hurricanes special teams coach Todd Hartley (now at Georgia) went out to San Francisco during Miami’s bye week in October and offered him a scholarship on the spot. A week later, when he was back home around his family, Hedley announced he had committed.
“With the academy I’m in, we only accept offers if we’re going to take it. We don’t decommit or anything like that,” Hedley said. “I could have gone to Texas Tech, but I decided not to go to Texas Tech because I didn’t want to commit that early somewhere. Then it was sort of between Mississippi State and Miami, and although Mississippi State didn’t offer me, it was getting very close to that point and I chose Miami.”
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Why the Hurricanes?
“It was the lifestyle, I think,” said Hedley, who said he has only seen clips of ESPN’s “30 for 30” films on Miami. “I said this from the start, when I first found out about college football I knew about The U, and I always thought playing for Miami would be unreal, it would be a dream. Once it started becoming a reality, the coaches were interested and it might happen, it was unreal and unbelievable, and I’d choose no team other than Miami.”
His official visit to Miami a month later in December only cemented his feelings.
“Obviously a school like Miami, you have pretty high expectations. They exceeded all of mine,” Hedley said. “The indoor facility and the campus itself is amazing. The things around the school, it’s not just a college football school. You’ve got South Beach, the city. It’s just an unreal place to spend the next three years of my life.”
UM happy to have him
Jonathan Patke, who coaches linebackers at Miami and has taken on special team coordinator duties since Manny Diaz took over as head coach, credited special teams graduate assistant Danny Kalter for maintaining a good relationship for Miami with Hedley during the coaching transition.
Diaz said he wasn’t even around the weekend Hedley made his official visit to Miami because he had already agreed to leave his spot as Miami’s defensive coordinator to become Temple’s new head coach. Then, Mark Richt retired a couple days after UM’s loss to Wisconsin in the Pinstripe Bowl, and everything changed.
“So I’ve never seen him in person,” Diaz said last week of Hedley. “The picture he tweeted out, ‘You know, hey, I think he’s the guy we should send out for the coin toss every week and see how they feel about that.’
“Listen, this is Miami. We’re not going to shock people in Miami. I think he’ll fit in perfectly. And we’re happy to have who he is as a football team.”
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The Hurricanes badly needed to upgrade the punting position after finishing 104th out of 130 Football Bowl Subdivision teams last season in punting efficiency, according to Football Outsiders.
“He’s very important to this class,” Patke said. “It’s very important to fix our punt team. He has the talent to do so. I’m not saying he will, but obviously, we have (walk-on) Jack Spicer on campus and like Coach said, everything in this program will be a battle to put the best talent on the field. But he does have the leg talent to do so.
“Obviously he has a lot of tattoos. He’s rocked up. He’s got some power in that leg. I’ve seen him kick it 60 yards. He can do it all. He can rugby, kick it straight. We’re going to put him in the best situation.”
Working both styles today. Looking forward to this weekends official visit 🙌🏽 #itsallabouttheU #surge19 pic.twitter.com/takF57suaA
— Louis Hedley (@LouisHedley1) December 11, 2018
Last season, Hurricanes fans mercilessly booed sophomore Zach Feagles before he lost the punting job to Spicer in the middle of the season.
Hedley said he’s ready to deal with the pressure at Miami to perform.
“That’s all part of college football,” he said. “I don’t think any player at the college level should get booed on performance. We are striving to be professionals, and to become great you must learn from your mistakes. I realize there’s high expectations, but this is what I’ve been training for and I’m ready. My end goal is to punt in the NFL. I need to learn how to handle myself under pressure if I want to achieve this goal. I’ll take one game at a time, one kick at a time, and work my ass off.”
In the meantime, Hedley said, he will continue training six days a week in Australia — including three days a week with his punting coach — to prepare for his trip to Coral Gables.
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He’s lost about 10 pounds since beefing up to as much as 245 in the past year and wants to get down 230 pounds by the time he arrives in South Florida five days before the start of classes.
One of the first things he plans to do once he gets here, he said, is find a tattoo shop he likes.
“I definitely plan on getting The U or maybe Sebastian tattooed on me,” said Hedley, who said he got his first tattoo in a “pretty dungy place” on a backstreet in Hong Kong when he was 15.
“I’ll figure it out once I’m there.”
