Quick Chat: Rodrigo Blankenship

By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer

He kicks game-winning field goals, his distinctive glasses are visible inside his helmet, he once asked a classmate to a dance while wearing an Iron Man costume. A conversation with Georgia kicker Rodrigo Blankenship is pretty much guaranteed to be interesting.

The redshirt sophomore from Marietta, Ga., has been one of the best kickers in the country this season. He's 10-for-11 on field goals, including the game-winner at Notre Dame, perfect on 31 extra points and he's booting kickoffs out of the end zone regularly.

During a Quick Chat after practice Tuesday, Blankenship talked about that Iron Man costume, #RespectTheSpecs, being named Most Athletic his senior year at Sprayberry High School and much more. Here's some of what he had to say:

Frierson: We've got Halloween a few days away, so do you have a favorite candy or costume?

Blankenship: I guess the favorite candy would be Sour Patch, really big on those, and favorite costume would probably be Iron Man. I was Iron Man junior year of high school and then I did it again senior year — I used it to ask out a girl to Homecoming, too, so that was pretty cool.

Frierson: I have to ask about wearing the Iron Man costume to ask someone to Homecoming. How did that work?

Blankenship: She said yes, thankfully. It was pretty cool, her first period teacher was one of my teacher's, too, it was AP Government, Mr. Smith, he's one of my favorite teachers, such a cool teacher.

He let me use his audio system in the classroom to play the Iron Man theme song. She walked up to the door and there was a little red carpet there and when she walked in I popped out, in the costume, and it was a pretty big production.

Frierson: What's something you've tried to master but have never even come close?

Blankenship: Maybe swimming. I never learned how to swim as a little kid and over the summer ... my girlfriend got me some swim lessons. I got pretty OK at it, where I at least knew I wasn't going to drown, but I've still got a little ways to go on that, for sure.

Frierson: Is it just a mental thing, getting to where you can relax in the water and know that you're going to be OK?

Blankenship: Yeah, every time they'd try to get me to float on my back, I'm always real tense and it doesn't work out well for floating.

Frierson: Tell me about the #RespectTheSpecs hashtag on Twitter. When and why did you start doing that?

Blankenship: I think I started putting it on my posts last year. I started doing a thing where I would post right before our meal on Friday night. ... I'd do something every Friday, even this past week even though we had the bye week, I still wanted to keep the routine going.

It's taken off a little bit, slowly, and it's gaining a little traction.

Frierson: It's a good hashtag, the kind of thing you might see on a t-shirt one day. Has it had about the response that you were expecting, because I notice there are a lot of people using it when they tweet about you?

Blankenship: I kind of just did it because I thought it was catchy. It's definitely gotten a little more traction than I thought, because I thought it was just going to be something that I would do and people would poke fun at me for it. But it's got a little something going.

Frierson: Not a whole lot of kickers are named Most Athletic in high school, but I saw where you were, for soccer and football. Were you a good soccer player?

Blankenship: I was pretty good. I started playing when I was 4 years old, played club up until freshman year of high school. That's when it gets real tough because you have part of the season in the fall, when football's going on, and it's real tough to do.

I was almost always playing at least a year up, maybe two years up, and that got me really well equipped for high school. I dressed for a couple of games as a freshman and when I got over to Sprayberry I started as soon as I got there, as a sophomore.

Our teams weren't so hot when I was at Sprayberry, but that's just the way it goes sometimes.

Frierson: In your dreams, especially with the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, if you could play there for the Falcons or you could play for Atlanta United, which would it be? Either way you're going to have about 70,000 people there watching.

Blankenship: Oh, man, Atlanta United is packing that place in. I don't know, I'd have to flip a coin on that.

Frierson: If you could do some athletic feat just once, to experience it, what would it be?

Blankenship: I think it would be either hitting a home run or throwing a guy out at home from right field.

Frierson: Where would you go if you were given all the time and money you needed to travel anywhere in the world?

Blankenship: That's a good one. I feel like there's two places: one would be Brazil, because I have a lot of family in Brazil and I haven't been able to go back there in a very long time, because air fare is very expensive; the other one would be Barcelona.

I would want to go to Barcelona and go to a Barcelona-Real Madrid game.

Frierson: The Clasico: year in, year out maybe the best games in sports. That would be a tough ticket to get.

Blankenship: That's very true, but this trip is on someone else's dime.

Frierson: When you go home, what tells you you're home? Is there a sight, sound or smell that hits you and immediately lets you know?

Blankenship: It's probably my dog, Tony. ... I guess it would be Tony, because he knows the sound of my truck and as soon as he hears it pulling up to the curb he bolts around from the back yard and comes up to the fence. I walk down the driveway and he's there waiting for me.

(This Q&A was lightly edited for length and clarity.)

John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.

University of Georgia Athletics

Players Mentioned

Rodrigo Blankenship

Related Videos