It's not that often that a kicker makes an impression on a team, a school and a community like the one Elijah Hoffman has. The Southern Columbia senior leads the state in points after touchdowns with 90 kicking points 123 which is a state record and over 6.100 yards in kickoffs also tops in the state.
"It's great kicking on a team that scores so many points because it means that I get to kick a lot, but special teams a lot are undervalued. A lot of people don't look up to it so sometimes it can help us win a game if it 's close just get some points on the board if we can't get a touchdown," said Elijah.
Elijah carries a 4.0 GPA in school and scored a 1520 on his SAT's, and as a distinguished honor student he attends Bloomsburg University 5 days a week under the ace program majoring in biology and pre-med hoping to someday to become a doctor.
"I take two classes a day and rotate Monday Wednesday Friday and Tuesday Thursday and the only class that I have to take at Southern Columbia is gym and I take psychology, theater appreciation, chemistry and anthropology. You eventually want to become a doctor why is that? I broke my leg three years ago and I was around a lot of the doctors and all of the technology really interested me and I knew that was I wanted to do," said Elijah
Over the last two years Elijah has balanced his athletics playing soccer and being the kicker here for the Tigers. He also took on some new responsibilities this year as the punter and hopes to be a kicker in college soon.
"It's pretty easy to balance because I would come and kick football for 30 minutes while the soccer team was stretching and then I would go over to soccer and practice once I was done kicking," said Elijah.
Elijah co-founded "Tigers in the community" the school's service group and he also has 9 years of altar service at his church.
"You can't always count on sports to get you somewhere because there is always going to be people working hard too and maybe they will get more looks than you but education you can always rely on to get you somewhere in life," added Elijah
Steve Lloyd Newswatch 16 sports reporting from Columbia County.
