CHENEY, Wash. – Eastern Washington football’s Soren McKee is one of the most accurate kickers in all of FCS, and he ranks first in the Big Sky. We sat down with the redshirt senior at Roos Field today for a one-on-one interview.
JACK WALLACE: What about Cheney, what about the Eags made you decide all those years ago that ‘I got to be here, and I got to go to Eastern’?
SOREN MCKEE: Yeah, Cheney isn’t maybe exactly the place that I would have expected myself to be. But, you know, as a place I knew I could come in and develop not just as a football player, but as a human being.
JW: And that only one D1 offer being here, I mean, talk about how those conversations started up and what made it, at least what you can see of how why they really wanted you, and how that partnership kind of worked out.
SM: Luckily, my head coach went to bat for me and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got the best kicker in the state. You can use him.’ And, at that time, they hadn’t offered another kicker.
JW: For all these years, from redshirt to now, you’ve still stuck around. Like, what about Eastern Washington, what about Cheney? Has led you to always want to come back?
SM: I haven’t found a reason to leave, and I’m glad I stayed. I saw guys like Efton Chism who absolutely could have, you know, gotten paid somewhere. And people were telling him, ‘You’ll get a better chance at the NFL if you go somewhere bigger.’ And he stuck around. He wanted to leave a legacy, and he did.
JW: How do you manage that mentally, where you have these big stakes, huge moments that are on you? That’s such a small portion of the actual game and yet can be so often what can decide the game one way or the other?
SM: Something that Coach Best says that I really like is he says, ‘Right, ride the kiddy coaster; just don’t get too high, don’t get too low.’ It’s really easy. You know, you have a, you know, a huge kick. Whether you make it or miss it, you know, the emotions are going to run high or low. And it’s just making sure you’re focusing on the next opportunity.
JW: What would you want people to remember you for, for your time here in Cheney?
SM: I would hope that I was a good example for people, especially guys in the special teams room. I hope they can kind of take lessons from how I act, how I operate.
JW: Go through your whole life, whether it’s youth, football, high school, now, what is your favorite kick you’ve ever had? And you pick one kick. What’s the favorite one you’ve ever done?
SM: Homecoming a couple of weeks ago against Northern Colorado, kick to go up nine points and kind of, not put the nail in the coffin, but at least shut the coffin. I think it was really, really exciting, getting on the sideline and just having all that excitement for my teammates. And, you know, it was just a really, really awesome experience in front of the home crowd.
To watch the full interview, we have it linked to this article under the second video option.
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