After making his daily quick-change from football to soccer, or vice versa, Chris Freeman had this brief, worlds-collide moment.
“We did some training out on the football field one day, and he just got finished doing some kicking, so there were had a couple of balls sitting out there,” said Rob Jordan, soccer coach at Zionsville High. “Chris took one of them and spun it, where it just spun on its nose, and then he went up and hit it. And he hit a 60-yard field goal. I’m like, ‘holy cow, what’d you just do?’”
It was clear to everyone around Zionsville, Ind., by then that Chris Freeman could do whatever he set his mind, and his foot, on doing.
“He has an unbelievable belief in himself,” said Pat Echeverria, who first welcomed Freeman onto the football team at Zionsville. “He’s just very cool. The moment doesn’t get him.”
After Freeman, on his way to becoming the best soccer player in Indiana, decided to play both sports simultaneously as a sophomore in 2017, he kicked a 37-yard field goal to win his first football game. Later that season, he kicked a 48-yarder in the final seconds to win a state playoff game.
Now in his sixth year of college football, Freeman has gone out out for two monster pressure kicks on the road for UConn. He nailed a 41-yarder on the last play in regulation to force overtime at Syracuse on Sept. 6. They lost that one. On Saturday, after the Huskies had again given up the lead on the road, Freeman hit a 44-yarder into the breeze to lift his team to a 20-17 victory at Buffalo.
“I was just hoping, ‘give me one more chance,’” Freeman told reporters after the game. “I felt that was echoing in my mind from the Syracuse game as well. I haven’t had a game winner since high school, so it feels really, really good.”
The towns surrounding Indianapolis have been good to UConn. From Noblesville came women’s basketball sharp-shooter Ashlynn Shade; Greenfield has sent Braylon Mullins, the presumptive freshman phenom to the men’s basketball team. Zionsville is a regular opponent of both schools. After four years at Indiana University, where he earned his degree in finance from Kelley School of Business, Freeman transferred to UConn to pursue an MBA and be the go-to kicker. Saturday was Freeman’s turn to set his hometown abuzz.
“He’s just a kid of high character,” said Scott Turnquist, who replaced Echeverria at Zionsville during Freeman’s career. “Talking with (UConn coaches) during the recruiting process when they were working on getting Chris over there … having him on your team, you’ll never regret it, because he’s the kind of kid you want in your program because he’s a team-first guy. He’s a guy you can always count on, that he’s doing the right things, and they just loved hearing that.”
It’s one thing to be a team-first guy with one team at a time. Freeman doubled up on being a dependable teammate during his autumns at Zionsville. The dedicated soccer and football fields are actually a couple of miles apart. The football coaches would try to hold special teams practice until Freeman could get there from soccer training, or the soccer coaches would do their best to schedule around football commitments. Freeman made the rest of it work.
“He always came over after soccer practice,” Echeverria said. “And he’d come running over in his soccer gear, get a few kicks in, we’d do the special teams and then he’d stay after practice and get a few more kicks in.”
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Freeman’s father encouraged him to try both sports after his freshman season. He soon realized his college future, especially once player compensation became a thing, would be in football. He hooked up with Mark Hagee, a kicking instructor in Indianapolis, to learn the finer points of football kicking technique and handled punting and place kicking for Zionsville.
“My first experience with him was a college showcase before his senior year,” Turnquist said. “There were a lot of guys there who wanted to see him kick, and it was just incredible watching him perform, the confidence he had to move the ball around, take deep kicks, not worried about missing. He wanted to show what he was capable of.”
It all began, the nature of putting foot to ball, with soccer. “There is no doubt, if he concentrated on soccer, he was a Division I player,” Jordan said.
An attacking midfielder, Freeman never lost sight of how much the soccer team, on which he had made many close friends, depended on him, too. He had 13 goals and 10 assists during his senior year, 2019, leading Zionsville to an undefeated, untied season and a state championship, and he was named the state’s Gatorade Player of the Year. In that position, he had to make all kinds of kicks from all angles, but when a high-stakes penalty kick was in demand, Jordan knew who to go to. “And I never had a doubt in my mind Chris would put it in back of the net,” he said.
Before his scholastic football career ended, Freeman kicked a school-record 52-yard field goal, in addition to his game winners. At IU, he redshirted a year, and was a kick-off specialist for two before becoming the primary kicker in 2023, making 10 of 14. When he moved to UConn, Freeman missed his first three field goal attempts in 2024, then hit four in a game vs. Merrimack and made 20 of his last 23, with a long of 53 yards vs. UMass. He’s 8-for-9 through five games this season He’s on the Lou Groza Award watch list, and building a case.
Freeman told UConn coaches he was good from at least 53 yards on Saturday, and was actually a little disappointed when he was asked to punt rather than try a 56-yarder. He executed the fake perfectly, pinning Buffalo inside its 10-yard line. Freeman’s soaring game-winner would probably have been good from 55 or 60.
“He’s very mature, poised, confident,” coach Jim Mora said. “He understands the situation, he doesn’t get overwhelmed.”
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As he did with both his teams at Zionsville, Freeman has made friends quickly at UConn. He sharpens his mental skills by playing golf, often joined by teammates, including quarterback Joe Fagnano, punter Connor Stutz and tight ends Louis Hansen and Alex Honig. Freeman’s an athlete, a football player’s place-kicker.
“He could have played other positions for us, if he didn’t play soccer,” Echeverria said.
But place kicking is a unique position in sports. Freeman, twice now, has watched his teammates fight through hard, physical battles on the road, and then been asked to go out and save the day, maybe the season, with one stroke. Kicking, Freeman says, is “90 percent between the ears.” His imaginary destination is the “flow state,” also known as “the zone,” focused on the ball, his foot and the rhythm he’s developed with Zach Christinat, the long-snapper from Norwalk, and Stutz, who holds for him.
“A lot of it comes down to my faith in the Lord,” Freeman said in Buffalo. “That gives me a lot of freedom to just perform and do what I do out here and trust in my abilities. I trust in Zach, trust in Connor, and I trust in the offense to get in position to make that kick.”