MORGANTOWN - It's the sports columnist's dream.
Local boy does good.
OK, strike that.
Local boy overcomes obstacles and does good.
Wait, wait, wait.
Local boy overcomes obstacles and does good for one of the nation's top college football teams.
That's the ticket. And that's what we have in West Virginia University kicker Mike Molina, the pride of Hurricane.
Molina, in case you didn't know, is one of the triumvirate of Mountain State-born WVU specialists, along with punter Billy Kinney (Morgantown) and holder Nick Meadows (Williamstown). He's big stuff - even at 5-foot-8 - however, as the only Kanawha Valley player on the Mountaineers' two-deep chart.
And it's quite a neat story.
"All my life I've always been interested in football, even though I wasn't the biggest guy around," Molina said on Tuesday. "With my dad being a doctor, I played soccer growing up, but he didn't allow me to play football because all his patients were football players who were hurt.
"He didn't want me to get hurt and he knew I was small. By middle school, though, I convinced him I could kick. I told him if I got hit as a kicker, it was a flag. That was always my thing."
He smiled.
"And then I played a little receiver without him knowing for a while."
It's doubtful the kicker got much past his father, Manuel Molina, a CAMC orthopedic surgeon with a specialty in sports medicine. Yet the redshirt junior has been determined.
"In high school I started going to camps and found I was just as good as the guys who were supposed to be top-notch," said the player.
Molina couldn't have lacked for confidence. He lettered for Hurricane High in track and was a Class AAA state meet long jump qualifier. He kicked for three years under then-football coach Willis May. He was a team captain, and he played in the North-South All-Star game.
But landing the kicking job at WVU was anything but easy.
"When I came in there was a job open," Molina said. "I thought this was a good place for me."
While Molina was sitting out 2013 as a redshirt freshman, however, a guy named Josh Lambert was out there crushing field goals at a 73.9 percent clip and from as far away as 50 yards. In 2014, that same guy was hitting 76.9 percent and from as far away as 55 yards. And last season Lambert was doing much of the same, hitting 75 percent.
Yet a not-so-funny thing happened on the way to Lambert's dream redshirt senior season. In sum, it didn't happen. There was a suspension. There was a brief return. There was a parting of the ways with the Mountaineer team.
And the man left standing as the kicker - and hitting 77.8 percent of his field goal tries so far - is Molina. He's hit 7 of 9 attempts, with a long of 34 yards, and is averaging 58.9 yards per kickoff with 12 touchbacks and two out of bounds.
"Honestly, nothing changed with my attitude," Molina said. "In the spring, when all that happened, I knew I had to step up. But since then I've had the same attitude every day: that I have to get better and focus on me and the best will come."
No dustups when Lambert was reinserted into the lineup?
"You know, I mean, it's Josh Lambert," Molina said of the 2014 Lou Groza Award finalist. "I mean, he's made a lot of kicks. He has the big leg, so ... I just went at it as I'm going to get better and better."
One area he's now honing is kickoffs.
"I've been working on directional [kickoffs]," he said. "I mean, I've kicked two out of bounds this year, which is unacceptable. It bugs me. It hurts our defense a lot. So it's something I need to get better at."
Understand there are different kickoffs: regular, on-side, pooch and squib.
"I like to just kick it deep though," Molina said with a smile.
Molina said he enjoys returning to Hurricane, where his mother Cheryl also lives. ("Everybody treats me the same," said the kicker. "That's why I love being at home.")
But his smile is wide walking around Puskar Stadium these days as well.
"The most fun is being around the guys here," he said. "We all get along. Coming here, everybody is like family to me. If I miss one, I know they have my back. So every time I'm out there I'm really just trying to score points. It's fun."
And a pretty neat story as well.
Contact Mitch Vingle at 304-348-4827 or mitchvingle@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @MitchVingle.