Meet Jeff Wolfert, the walk-on who held Mizzou football's scoring record before Harrison Mevis

Harrison Mevis’ record-breaking field-goal attempt pierced the goalposts, but it was a former Missouri football kicker, Jeff Wolfert, who started getting text messages.

Mevis' 42-yard field goal in the third quarter of MU's loss against Georgia had just scored his 364th point for the Tigers and broken the program’s all-time scoring record.

Wolfert’s record.

Later that day, the ex-Tiger’s phone started buzzing.

“I did get a couple text messages, you know, ‘Sorry, Jeff. It was a good run,’” Wolfert said. “‘We'll never forget that you did it in three seasons.’”

Mevis is the new points leader MU history. There’s been some big kicks and bigger moments in his four years with the team.

Fifteen years earlier, Wolfert kicked the final point of his Missouri career — an unlikely kicking career, at that — for a total that would top the records for a decade and a half.

Here’s the story of how a youth soccer player and one-year Mizzou swim and dive athlete broke quarterback Brad Smith’s scoring record in three seasons as the starting kicker.

‘Just as good, if not better’

There’s a pair of kicks that stand out in Wolfert’s memory.

Of course, the Kansas City native and former Tiger remembers the two that helped down the Kansas Jayhawks.

“My junior season, when we're playing Kansas and there's a number-one ranking on the line and we're playing at Arrowhead, so my hometown stadium,” Wolfert said. “And I was able to hit two 43-yard field goals in the fourth quarter.”

Those, combined with a last-gasp safety in the final seconds, helped MU to an eight-point Border War win — a fairytale for any Mizzou fan.

How he got there, however, was maybe even more out of a storybook.

Wolfert arrived as a freshman committed to compete for Mizzou’s swim and dive team on the boards. He competed for one season in college. He played soccer before college, but was never quite big enough to be a football player in high school. Nevertheless, he’d developed a pretty big leg through his corner and free-kick duties.

His diving career helped him fill out his frame. He was big enough to take to the gridiron now, so he took a chance.

“The very first day of school, there was a kicker try out,” Wolfert said. “It's not a very well known thing. I was going up to the football offices and just going to the front desk and asking, ‘Hey, can I try out? I want to show someone that I can kick.’”

After he’d bothered the front desk enough, they told him to come prepared at 3 p.m. on the first day of school to loft some kicks.

Wolfert’s first try out was unsuccessful. The team told him they weren’t looking to add kickers. Unfazed, he practiced on his own over the winter so that by springtime he could give it another shot.

So, when spring camp arrived, Wolfert approached then-quarterbacks coach David Yost and managed to get him to watch him take some kicks.

Something told him that was the right choice.

“I am watching guys kick on Saturdays in college and I know I can kick just as good, if not better than those guys,” Wolfert said. … “I kind of had this burning desire to play football and I was always too small, now I’m big enough, so I did everything I could to try to get seen by someone and finally I got a look.”

The second tryout did the trick.

Wolfert was offered a spot as a walk-on. He won the starting battle in 2006 and proceeded to score the most points (99) in a single season by a kicker. Three seasons later, he was Missouri’s all-time leading points scorer with 362, which was 80 more than Smith, the legendary MU QB.

“I just wanted to be on the team and I wanted to play,” Wolfert said. “And that's the first part, and then all of a sudden you make a whole bunch of kicks. And then it's like OK, now you have all-conference honors. And then it's like 'OK, Jeff, do it again.'”

He did it again … and again.

He never missed a PAT attempt in 185 tries and made 61 of his 72 (84.7%) of his field-goal attempts.

Not bad for a diver.

Breaking the record

Mevis knew.

He’d heard that he was approaching Wolfert’s record ahead of MU’s trip to Sanford Stadium. That didn’t faze him. He went 100% on field goals and converted his lone PAT attempt against the Bulldogs. He’s now up to 364 points in his MU career — and counting, with a chance to add to that when MU kicks off its game against Tennessee at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in Columbia.

“It's the big moments in the game that make the game fun,” Mevis said Tuesday. “That's why I came here. That's why I play football.”

Mevis compared kicking to golf due its emphasis on repetition. Through all the holder and snapper partners in his four seasons — and there have been several — he’s maintained the same in-game, pre-game and preseason routine.

“The challenge,” the fan-dubbed Thiccer Kicker said, “is to be yourself and control what you can control.”

That’s what he attributes to being so successful over the course of his career. There’s been the 61-yard, SEC-record-breaking winner over Kansas State. He burst onto the scene as a freshman with a gamewinner against Arkansas. He’s hit more 50-yarders than anyone in MU history.

But there’s also been struggles, namely the missed chip shot as time expired against Auburn in 2022. Even this season, Mevis missed his first two field-goal attempts of the year.

Through that, after all the lows, Mevis has, inevitably, responded with memorable highs.

Wolfert has seen how much the team has relied on Mevis over the past four seasons. Breaking the record, he said, is a testament to his ability, especially in long-yardage situations. “He’s earned it,” he said.

The ability to bounce back, however, is the great separator.

“I think when I look back at last year, he had an untimely miss versus Auburn,” Wolfert said, “and then the very next week plays against Georgia and has just an outstanding game, and he could have just absolutely crumbled. … He's able to come out there and just absolutely flip the script. And that's the difference between kickers that make it and kickers that don't.”

15 years at the top

Wolfert did not know.

Standing there that day on the practice field in front of Yost, trying to make his way onto the team, of course he never knew that one day he was going to top Smith’s record.

“No one could have ever seen it coming,” Wolfert said. … “It's hard to sit back and say I was gonna be the all-time points leading scorer, just, like, no. I did not think that. I just wanted to be the starter.”

Wolfert plays it off a little.

That was just how good the offense was back then, he said. He was playing with Chase Daniel and Jeremy Maclin and NFL talents left, right and center. Scoring 185 PATs means there were 185 touchdowns. He set the single-season record of 133 points as a senior because the offense just kept getting him out there, he says. He doesn’t remember if he set the record at home or on the road. He only remembers a few articles in the aftermath.

Still, he made them. His 362 points narrowly outlasted Andrew Baggett (355) and Tucker McCann (358). It took 15 years to beat.

Not a bad haul for the walk on.

Not a bad conversation piece, either.

He’d bring the record up from time to time in Kansas City, especially after running into Kansas and Kansas State fans in the Jayhawk- and Wildcat-laden city.

“That’s quite the accolade to hang your hat on,” Wolfert said.

What do they say about all good things?

“I'm happy to pass the torch over to Harrison,” Wolfert said. “I mean, I had it for almost two decades. That’s long enough. Records are meant to be broken.”

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Meet Jeff Wolfert, the walk-on who held Mizzou's all-time scoring for 15 years