TAMPA, Fla. — A long-snapping camp brought more than 60 elite long snappers to the Tampa Bay area over the weekend to help hone the skills that could land them a dream job in the NFL. 

What You Need To Know

  • Special Teams University hosted a two-day camp for long snappers over the weekend

  • Organizers say theirs is the only camp available for NFL long snappers

  • Founder Kyle Stelter says more than 60 long snappers attend the camp every year

Special Teams University founder Kyle Stelter says the camp helps him relive his days of being in uniform and pads and running drills on the gridiron. 

“Watching this is definitely cool to relive it, but at the same time, now my goal is to make sure that these guys are getting that same opportunity,” he told Spectrum Sports 360’s Katya Guillaume

Stelter played football throughout middle and high school, and then in college. 

“Growing up in a small town in Wisconsin, I was captain of the football team, an offensive lineman at 200 pounds," he said. "And growing up, it was always something I wanted to do, is I wanted to be the captain of the football team. I wanted to play college football and then someday I wanted to play in the NFL or professional football.”

But it was his senior year in college when he found long snapping.

“Snapping for me was something more of a necessity,” he said. “It was — and I just wanted to keep playing football and out of high school it was an opportunity for me to just continue to play.”

In 2014, after a stint with the New York Jets, he hung up his cleats to help others with their dreams and aspirations in this area of the sport.

“We’re here to give an opportunity to younger athletes — college, draft eligible, and free agents — to showcase themselves in an atmosphere that is more realistic,” Stelter said.

The two-day training puts the 66 attendees through unique challenges and tests, including athletes like Robert Soderholm, who is set to be commissioned in the United States Army Reserves while still trying to pursue his dreams of playing in the NFL.

“People go to these camps that are about ranking that can get you in college and things like that, and I didn’t see much of a purpose in getting ranked," Soderholm said. "I thought, 'What does it matter if I’m ranked if I’m not good?' What matters is getting better, and that’s what Kyle and Special Teams U are all about.

“This is gonna be a camp that’s going to expose a lot of kids that have a dream of going and playing in the NFL to what it might actually take, and it’s also one of the largest long snapping camps that involves a higher echelon of snappers.”

Stelter said that’s why he started all of this.

He said looking around and speaking to the different athletes brings it back around for him — remembering the opportunities that weren’t available when he was starting, something he doesn’t want to see anymore.

“Just seeing the number of snappers that we have here right now is exciting,” he said. “Because it shows me that these guys aren’t just resting on what they’ve done in the past, they want to improve and they are hungry to improve.”

And that's something Stelter said he wanted to help them all achieve.

The camp is limited to college and free agent football players from the U.S., Canada and beyond. Stelter said players traveled from as far as Japan to attend the most recent camp.