ORONO – Gary Parlin used to tell anyone who would listen that John Moloney should be kicking for the University of Maine.

“I believed that then and now just because of the type of kid he is,” said the Mt. Blue football coach. “We self-profess not to know anything about kicking here, so here’s a kid that just went out and worked and worked and worked and did the whole thing by himself.”

Moloney believed in himself as much as his former high school coach does, and he’s making enough of a believer out of Maine coach Jack Cosgrove to go from helping the team from behind a video camera to potentially helping the Black Bears from seven yards behind the line of scrimmage when their season opens next Saturday in Iowa.

He had to take a rather circuitous route to get to Orono in the first place. An all-state kicker and receiver at Mt. Blue, he didn’t draw a great deal of interest from college programs, despite his accomplishments and Parlin’s public praise. He enrolled at Maine Maritime Academy and went out for football there, but he knew even before preseason camp ended that he was going to try to walk on at Maine.

When he got to Orono, he asked Cosgrove for a chance to kick. But Maine already had four kickers on the roster, so he took a job with the team’s video crew.

“It was great,” Moloney said. “I got to learn all of the things that they went through, all of the traveling experience, staying in hotels and all of that. And I got to know all of the guys, so when I came in the spring, they already knew me.”

Standing behind the goal posts on the video lift while taping games, Moloney never forgot his original goal. He continued weight training and went into the Mahaney Dome after intramural flag football games ended at 10 p.m. and kicked deep into the night.

“I got a holder from our equipment manager and he gave me a couple of balls and got the kicking bag in (the dome) and used the little field goal posts over there,” Moloney said during the team’s media day in the dome.

After the season, Cosgrove invited Moloney to kick as a walk-on at spring football. Three of the kickers graduated and the fourth quit, so he was the only kicker in spring workouts. It was the first time Cosgrove saw him kick.

“With no one else being there, it was a little more relaxed,” Moloney said. “The guys were all behind me. They all said, ‘Hey man, we don’t expect anything, so anything you can give us is great.’ And I really appreciated that. It made the whole transition seamless.”

“He got better all spring,” Cosgrove said. “He’s been very good kicking the ball. He’s put himself in a position to compete for the starting kicker’s job. I’ve been genuinely impressed with him and how he has gone about his business.”

Entering his junior year, Moloney has plenty of competition when preseason camp opened earlier this month. Three freshmen are also looking for the job – Jordan Waxman, a kicker/punter from Pennsylvania on full scholarship, another kicker/punter on partial scholarship, Brian Harvey from Massachusetts, plus walk-on kicker Christopher Gennaro from Thornton Academy. All of them attended the same summer camps in Massachusetts last summer and worked with the same coaches.

In practice, Moloney has hit from as far as 50 but feels comfortable from 40. He admits he needs to get his kickoffs deeper, and he has been working on improving his leg strength and flexibility, spending hours in the weight room and the pool for resistance and speed training.

“Flexibility and leg strength go hand-in-hand. You get more flexible, you get more leg-whip, more torque, and that means more power,” he said.

Cosgrove is impressed by Moloney’s persistence.

“Boston College had a guy (Steve Aponavicius) that walked on from the soccer field. Our guy’s coming off the lift. It’s crazy. It really is,” Cosgrove said. “But he’s got a shot to play for us. He’s the most experienced kicker we have now simply because he’s traveled to the games with us.”

“John is going to see this out,” he added. “I think as a result of the attitude he has, he will be successful.”

Moloney is on academic scholarship (studying mass communications), so there isn’t any financial pressure to make the team. He just wants to fulfill a dream that even he at times hasn’t quite been able to grasp.

“I never pictured it. I always hoped for it. I always worked for it, but it’s a hard thing to picture,” he said. “But if you keep your goals, anyone can do it.”