By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

MIAMI — The football journey continued for Mitchell Hayden Jeter on Thursday night in front of a national TV audience.

Jeter, whose hometown is Salisbury, kicked two 41-yard field goals in Notre Dame’s 27-24 win in a CFA playoff semifinal against Penn State in the Orange Bowl. His first one at the end of the half put the Fighting Irish on the scoreboard. His second one came in the final seconds and sent them to the national championship game. They’ll play Ohio State or Texas for the national title in Atlanta on Jan. 20.

Jeter has earned the nickname “Mr. January” from his teammates in recent weeks for his playoff heroics. He kicked two field goals, including a 49-yarder, in the first-round playoff win against Indiana. He kicked three field goals, all of more than 40 yards, in Notre Dame’s quarterfinal win against Georgia. No kicker had every done that in a playoff game.

Jeter was a soccer prodigy at Salisbury Academy as a youngster. Salisbury Academy doesn’t have a football team. He’d experimented with kicking footballs with his buddies, but he didn’t make his debut in organized football until he was a high school student at Cannon School in Concord.

Cannon School didn’t have enough players for a football team, but by combining with Concord First Assembly, they formed a squad known as the Cabarrus Warriors. They were coached by former Carolina Panthers fullback Brad Hoover. He gave Jeter a chance.

Kicking footballs is much different than booting soccer balls, but Jeter made a successful transition. He got serious about football, went to camps and was tutored by kicking and punting guru Dan Orner.

Jeter (5-11, 195) can run like a wide receiver and he was getting Division I soccer offers when he was a high school senior, but he also was rated as a two-star football recruit and was nationally ranked as a kicking prospect. He had some college options, but chose South Carolina.

He paid some dues at South Carolina behind a record-setting veteran. In 2020 and 2021, Jeter’s job was to kick off. In 2021, he got to kick his first two PATs, but no field goals.

He stuck it out and got to handle all the kicking duties for the Gamecocks in 2022 and 2023. He was 75-for-78 on extra points and was extraordinarily accurate on field goals in those two seasons — 23-for-25. He actually kicked a 45-yard field goal in a loss to Notre Dame in the 2022 Gator Bowl.

Jeter earned a degree in biological sciences while he was a Gamecock, but he still had a year of football eligibility left because of the COVID season for which every college athlete was granted a redshirt. He opted to spend that final year at Notre Dame, a major change of scenery form Columbia, S.C., and a school that which has brought in graduate students as kickers the last three seasons.

Jeter is 53-for-53 this season on extra points, although it’s been a 13-for-20 roller-coaster ride for him on field goals.

He had a stellar debut in a Notre Dame uniform on Aug. 31, going 3-for-3 on field goals, including one from 46 yards that clinched victory at Texas A&M.

Week 2 was something of a disaster for the Irish and for Jeter. He missed two field goals in the stunning 16-14 loss to Northern Illinois.

He bounced back with long field goals against Purdue and Louisville, but injuries to his hip and groin threatened to wreck his season. He aggravated the groin injury in the Stanford game on Oct. 12, and it was bad enough that he had to leave that romp very early.

He missed all of the next two games (Navy and Georgia Tech).

When he returned, he was trying to compensate for the injuries, experienced some struggles and lost some confidence. He missed a field goal against Florida State. He missed two against Army. He missed another one in the Southern Cal contest that ended the regular season. He was still making extra points, but he was 1-for-5 on field goals in those three games, and Irish fans were fretting about their team’s kicking game heading into the playoffs.

But Jeter had 20 days between the game at Southern Cal and the start of the playoffs. He got healthy.

When he kicked the 49-yard field goal against Indiana at the end of the first half, he reportedly exclaimed, “I’m back!” He can still run and he even made two tackles on kickoffs in that game.

He didn’t make any tackles, but his kicking was flawless against Georgia and Penn State.

Now he’s 7-for-8 on field goals in the playoffs, and now he’s Mr. January — with one really big game left in his college career.

“Coach (Marcus) Freeman talks a lot about delayed gratification,” Jeter told reporters in interviews after his game-winning kick. “He’s been talking like that all the way back to Week 2, when the  loss to Northen Illinois happened. So it’s kind of been my mindset, going through an injury, having delayed gratification now to be able to come out and give our team a chance to go win a national championship.”