Manatee kicker Axel Lepvreau is a special weapon in victory over Palmetto

A kicker usually sticks to a routine on every field goal attempt, regardless of how loud the outside noise gets.

For Manatee High junior Axel Lepvreau, his journey to kicking a football was anything but routine.

Lepvreau kicked three field goals of 40 or more yards as the Hurricanes defeated rival Palmetto, 29-20, on Friday night at Joe Kinnan Field at Hawkins Stadium.

“It’s a big rivalry, so obviously I just wanted to kick the best I can to help my team win,” Lepvreau said.

Lepvreau is from La Roche-Sur-Yon, France, where American football isn’t even close to a blip on the sports map that it is stateside. Rather, soccer is the more popular sport and that’s what Lepvreau played even as his family did a house exchange visit to Australia and then Bradenton.

After a one-year house exchange, where the Lepvreau family switched homes with another family in a different location, they settled on Bradenton as a permanent move.

Axel was in the sixth grade with parents Florent and Beatrice, and younger brother Louan making the Friendly City their new home.

By the time he entered high school, Axel began shifting his focus to football and had a hero in former Manatee High kicking star Nick Null to look up to.

Longtime Hurricanes special teams coach Dennis Stallard also improved Lepvreau’s game over time. Eventually, he became the kicker for the Canes and garnered college interest as a sophomore.

This year, Lepvreau said he didn’t start great the first two weeks.

But playing Palmetto was a motivating factor for increased focus in practice, he said.

On Friday, his left leg provided a special boost to Manatee’s offense.

“It’s valuable,” Manatee head coach Yusuf Shakir said. “You can’t win without that.”

The longest field goal he nailed, a 43-yard effort early in the fourth quarter of a 12-point game, stretched Manatee’s lead to 15.

The kick was miraculous considering the fact that Lepvreau said he hit the ground with his left foot before even striking the ball as it sailed through the middle of the uprights.

Meanwhile, Manatee’s offense relied on a multiple rushing attack with junior Napoleon Harris jumpstarting things with a 94-yard touchdown in the first quarter. Junior tailback Tyson Phelps added key yardage, too, while freshman Kyree Jones ran a bruising style in the vein of former Hurricanes star Leon Allen.

“He’s one of the hardest-working players on our team,” Shakir said of Harris. “I knew it was coming for him. We just had to keep pounding it in there.”

Shakir credited the offensive line, which included seniors Omar Lagarde, Carter Sysak and Sam Purcell and sophomores Derek Maurice and Charles Armstrong, for opening the running lanes.

Quarterback Anthony Squitieri and playmakers Keyon Fordham, Irone Jackson and Wes Coleman also excelled.

Palmetto head coach Dave Marino said the Hurricanes were hungrier than his team on Friday. He also said for a team that’s supposed to be have offensive power, they should have scored 40 and not 20 points.

“You get down in the red zone on the 2-yard line twice and come away with no points,” Marino said. “And we’re supposed to be this high-powered offense? Five returning starters on the O-line. Nah, nah. There’s no (other) way to cut it. They wanted it more than we did.”

The Tigers were stymied on four consecutive running plays inside the 5-yard line late in the first quarter while Manatee held a 10-7 lead. It was the last chance Palmetto had to take a lead in the game.

This story was originally published August 31, 2018 at 11:10 PM.