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He wants you to know kickers are people, too. But Andy Phillips is already more than a kicker.

He's the skier-turned-captain, a walk-on without much of a chance who battled to being a potential all-Pac-12 specialist. Fans call him "Automatic Andy." Kyle Whittingham calls him a "warrior."

Utah's sophomore kicker's story is mostly well known: The onetime Olympic hopeful made a sudden change in 2011, deciding to pursue a sport that he never played before.

What's been left unsaid is why he abandoned his first passion that had driven him his entire life, and why he pursued a new one that most of his loved ones considered a naïve fantasy. The answer is a difficult one: Sometimes you have to let your dreams die to be true to yourself.

The payoff of that choice? He's found himself in avenues he never expected: being a team leader and being more involved in his family, his faith, and being a father.

"It changed his whole perspective," Greg Phillips said of his son. "Skiing didn't have to be everything for him."

Starting skiing at 2 years old then racing by 5, Andy can't truly remember life before the sport. And he was good: He made the development team by 16, and then launched into the best season of his career with strong finishes in major events. Skiing took him around the globe, from Chile to France.

But like actual ski races themselves, there are strict rules and boundaries to one's career. To make the Olympics, one must stay on a pretty stringent path with no obstacle in the way of their downhill ambitions.

So it didn't go over well when he told US mens' ski coach Sasha Rearick he was taking two years off the slopes.

The sparring between Andy and his skiing interests began when he decided to go on an LDS Church mission. From a skiing perspective, it wasn't advisable, to be sure. He was ranked second in the world among under-18 skiers behind Marcel Hirscher, who went on to top five finishes in the Vancouver Olympics. Andy himself could've been there if he had stuck with skiing. But he came to realize that wasn't all there was to himself. He felt moved to make what he still calls the hardest decision of his life.

"It was something he thought I was doing to go with the masses or because of the pressures in the community, and that wasn't it at all," he said. "I had never imagined myself as a missionary before, but it was something I felt like I had to do."

After he spent two years in Norway, it was a tough road coming back. Colby Granstrom, one of Andy's best friends on the team and his eventual best man, remembers ski team members finding his speed "a little bit scary" and thinking he hadn't missed a beat. But that opinion wasn't shared by ski team coaches, who felt like he had to redouble his efforts to make up for a two-year absence.

Andy said he came in with renewed effort and focus in the desire to catch up to the field. Rearick said Andy simply put in the same time as he had before, and thought every step of progress was bigger than it actually was.

Wherever the truth lay, the divide between Andy and his coaches grew over the next year and a half. It was painful to watch, Granstrom said.

"I was trying to explain to the coaches, 'You realize how hard it is for him to do this: He wanted to stay true to himself, and now he needs your support to succeed,'" he said. "Right when he came back, he was skiing with all of us, and then it fizzled. I think the root of it was that mental aspect of not having that support."

It all came to a head when Andy herniated a disc in his back on a training run, even as he was trying to make his final push for a spot. He didn't make the team, he had rehab ahead, and participating in training and camps would've come with a $25,000 price tag that year. He also would have to spend more time away from his new wife and his family.

He was done skiing between the lines. It was time for something new.

You may have heard that he was kicking a football with friends three years ago when the crazy notion struck him that, with his soccer background and athletic ability, he could be a college kicker despite never having played the game.

It should be emphasized: It was Andy's idea. Others didn't embrace it.

Greg wanted to tell his son he was throwing his career away, but he still let him make his own decision. Megan Phillips, who had been married to Andy about six months, was less restrained. She had dated him through four years of ski racing and a mission, and she was ready for him to grow up.

"I told him, 'Come on, let's be serious here,'" she said. "He would wake up early for lifts and things like that, and I was bugged and irritated."

Andy freely admits it was a pipe dream from the beginning.

"It just seemed so absurd, I figured I might give it a shot," he said. "It wasn't really well-thought out. I just figured, 'I've been through life and death situations in skiing, I'm an athlete. I can't be that hard.'"

It was hard. He had to convince then-Utah special teams coach Jay Hill that it was even worth giving him a spot, which required working with former Utes kicker Joe Phillips for a few months at his own expense. When he got on the team, workouts didn't bother Andy, who had done conditioning and lifting his entire life — it was the drudgery. He'd work out, warm up, and then simply wait. As a walk-on, he was virtually anonymous.

"I don't think Coach Whitt spoke to me once that whole first year, to be honest with you," he said with a chuckle.

He won over people in the program gradually: First Pablo Cano, who helped him correct mechanical errors. Then Jay Hill, who watched the gradual progression of Andy's kicks, better and better each time.

Andy was also tireless, ravenous in the weight room, and the first to volunteer in a contest pushing a sled against linebacker Jared Norris. He earned his first opportunity to dress for a game as a redshirt freshman after Hill watched him lap other specialists while the team was running for a subpar practice.

"You have to be mentally tough," said Hill, who said he was impressed by Andy's ability to recover from mistakes. "Andy handled that like a champ. There was definitely some selling [to Kyle Whittingham] involved, but Andy won over everybody with the way he worked."

Plenty of scenarios in skiing are similar to his role as a specialist: the ability to make miniscule technical adjustments, the toughness, what Greg Phillips calls "the memory of a goldfish" when forgetting mistakes. Even standing at the starting gate of a race, a skier faces a count down not unlike a snap count. Though Andy still gets ruffled remembering his clashes with coaches late in his career, he recognizes how much he owes them for those skills.

But he has other gifts, too, leadership qualities that probably went underutilized in the very individualized sport of skiing.

"His hard work and motivating personality can inspire other people, and he was able to find that in football pretty much immediately," Granstrom said. "He told me, 'Yeah, it's so much work, but I feel like I can succeed.' It was just an avenue for him to be himself and maximize his potential."

Since announcing his arrival with a bang against Utah State — three made field goals and an onside kick recovery — Phillips has quickly established himself as a figurehead of the program. This year he's successfully kicked 20 of his 24 attempts, and has twice been named a Lou Groza star of the week. His former ski coaches are among his biggest fans, they said. He's still one of them, in a way.

But there's so much more to his life as well: His marriage is stronger, and Megan identifies a stronger knit community connected to the football team. He can spend more time with his family. He still skis in the offseason — Whittingham said they'll probably ski together this year — and he makes time for his faith. He golfs.

Of his roles, he embraces being a dad the most. He wakes up in the middle of the night to take care of his two-month-old, Maximus. He squeezes in time between his classwork and hours of football training for a bit of parenting.

Andy's favorite moment of the season so far has been after the Stanford game. Megan handed Max over to Andy on the field, and father and son spent a few minutes basking in the glow of a 20-17 win.

"He's always volunteering for the night shift telling me, 'Hey, let me do this,'" Megan said. "He's such a good dad."

He's often asked to give fireside talks or be a class room speaker. He talks about his life, how rich it has become, and how he had to muster the courage to go his own way. He loves to share his story.

"Football has opened so many more doors than skiing did," he said. "My motivation to become known is so I can have an opportunity to influence other people. So I can say, 'Hey, you might be stuck in this situation, but you put your mind to it and you can do anything you want if you work hard enough."

He stopped, then added one more line: "Luckily for me, a lot of that stuff has come true."

Twitter: @kylegoon —

Andy Phillips at a glance

O Started skiing at 2, won first race at 5

• U.S. Ski Team member 2007-2011

• Went on a two-year LDS Church mission to Norway from 2008 to 2010

• Walked on to Utah football team in 2012

• Earned starting kicking job in 2013 season, going 17 for 20

• Kicking 20 for 24 this season, No. 15 nationally in FG percentage

• No. 25 nationally with 8.7 points per game