Practice the Picture Before the Moment

OTU Unit Story | Holder’s Hand | Charles Mentzer

A former Michigan specialist built The Holder’s Hand around one of kicking’s most overlooked details:

The visual of a real hold.

Most kickers know the quiet part of the position.

The field is empty. The team has moved on. The snapper is somewhere else. The holder has another responsibility. So the kicker pulls out a bag of balls, pushes a pair of sticks into the turf, and gets to work alone.

There is nothing wrong with that work. In many ways, it is where kickers are built.

But Charles Mentzer noticed something inside those reps that most people never think about.

The ball was there.
The steps were there.
The swing was there.

The picture was not.

A football sitting on a rubber stop does not look the same as a football being held by a real person. There is no hand. No live-hold visual. No small adjustment from the eyes before the foot arrives. For kickers who spend hundreds of reps training alone, that difference can matter when the operation finally becomes live.

Mentzer understood the gap because he had lived it.

Before Holder’s Hand became a product, it was a problem he carried through his own kicking career; from solo work, to camp settings, to the specialist room at the University of Michigan.

And eventually, it became something he decided to build.

The Gap Kickers Know

Kicking sticks have become part of the specialist world for a reason.

They give kickers freedom. They allow volume. They make it possible to train when nobody else is available. For young kickers especially, they can be the difference between getting extra work and getting no work at all.

A kicker can use sticks before practice, after practice, on a side field, at a park, or on a summer night when the rest of the unit is not there. He can work through steps, contact, rhythm, ball flight, and confidence without waiting for someone else to be ready.

That matters.

But sticks also create a very controlled world.

The ball sits where the kicker places it. The setup is predictable. The visual stays clean. The rep begins when the kicker decides it begins.

Then the operation becomes live.

Now there is a snap. There is a holder. There is a hand on the football. There is movement, timing, trust, and a picture that looks different from the one the kicker has been seeing all week.

For some kickers, that change is small.

For others, it can feel like a different rep altogether.

That is the part Mentzer kept coming back to. It was not just whether a kicker could strike the ball. It was whether the way he trained alone prepared him for the picture he would actually see when the ball was held.

In a position where confidence can be built or broken by small details, the visual matters.

The eyes matter.

And that became the idea behind Holder’s Hand.

From the Specialist Room to the First Prototype

Mentzer’s kicking path started long before the product.

He began kicking in fifth grade and stayed around specialists as he grew through the game. By the end of high school, he was taking camps more seriously and working to find a path forward. That path eventually led him to the University of Michigan, where he walked onto one of the most competitive specialist rooms in college football.

The room was loaded.

Jake Moody. Brad Robbins. William Wagner. Tommy Doman. Greg Tarr.

Those were not just names on a roster. They were daily examples of what the position demanded. The room had future NFL talent, Big Ten experience, and a standard that forced everyone inside it to pay attention to the details.

For Mentzer, that environment shaped how he saw kicking.

It taught him that development was not always loud. It was not always obvious. It often lived in the small edges: the approach, the operation, the timing, the confidence, the feel of the rep, and the ability to make practice look more like the moment.

But his own path at Michigan was not clean.

After roughly a year and a half with the team, Mentzer was cut before Michigan’s 2023 national championship season.

That kind of moment can send an athlete in a lot of directions. Frustration. Excuses. Distance from the game. A quiet ending.

Mentzer went back to work.

He increased his class load. He kept kicking when he could. And while he was away from the team, he found himself in an entrepreneurship course that asked students to identify a user need, create design requirements, and build a minimum viable prototype.

He did not have to search very far for the user.

He was the user.

Kicking was still on his mind. The problem was still sitting there. The gap between stick work and live operation was not something he had read about. It was something he had felt.

So he started building.

What began as a class project slowly turned into something more serious. With an engineering background, Mentzer began thinking through the design and manufacturing side of the idea. He gathered feedback from kickers and coaches. He tested versions. He made changes. Then he made more changes.

The process looked a lot like the position itself.

Try it.
Miss something.
Adjust.
Try again.

The Holder’s Hand was not built from one clean idea on paper. It was built through reps.

A Product With a Specialist’s Why

Holder’s Hand is designed to attach to kicking sticks a kicker already owns and create the visual of a hand holding the football.

That is the simplicity of it.

It does not replace a snapper. It does not replace a holder. It does not replace live operation.

It gives the kicker a more realistic picture during the reps he is already taking alone.

That distinction matters because the best specialist tools are not always the most complicated ones. Sometimes the right tool solves one specific problem clearly.

For Holder’s Hand, the problem is visual translation.

A kicker warming up on sticks may feel clean. He may strike the ball well. He may make kick after kick in a controlled setting. But when the ball is finally held by a real person, the picture can change just enough to create hesitation.

Mentzer knew that feeling.

He had experienced it during his own development. He had been the young kicker who could perform well in a camp setting, then return to a team environment where the snapper and holder were not always available or consistent. He knew what it felt like to warm up on sticks, build confidence, then step into live operation and feel the rep become different.

For many specialists, that is not rare.

It is normal.

At the high school level, a holder might be a wide receiver, quarterback, punter, or another athlete who has several responsibilities. A snapper might be developing at the same time. The offensive line may not be available for full operation work. Practice space can be limited. Kicking balls may be scarce. The specialist period may be shorter than it should be.

So the kicker does what he can.

He trains alone.

Holder’s Hand was built for that reality.

Not the perfect environment. The real one.

Built for the Reps Taken Alone

There is a lonely side to specialist development that families and coaches may not always see.

A kicker can be part of a team and still spend much of his actual technical work by himself. He may have a school coach who supports him but does not specialize in kicking. He may have a holder who is willing but unavailable. He may have to create his own routine, bring his own equipment, and find his own rhythm within a practice plan that was not built around him.

That is why the reps taken alone matter so much.

They are not bonus reps. For many kickers, they are the foundation.

The challenge is making those reps as useful as possible.

Holder’s Hand gives those solo reps a detail they have often been missing. It helps the kicker see something closer to the live-hold picture before he gets into a live operation. The ball is still being struck. The approach is still being trained. The rhythm still belongs to the kicker.

But now the visual has changed.

There is a hand in the picture.

That may seem small to someone outside the position. To a kicker, small is often where the position lives.

The difference between comfort and doubt can be a tiny visual cue. The difference between trusting the swing and steering the ball can come from how familiar the rep feels. The difference between practice confidence and game confidence can be built long before the ball is snapped.

Holder’s Hand does not claim to solve every part of that.

It simply gives kickers a better way to prepare for one part of it.

And sometimes, one better detail is the start of better training.

The Comeback Inside the Build

What makes Mentzer’s story fit the OTU community is not only that he created a product. It is how the product connects back to his own path.

He was cut.

He kept working.

He built something while he was away from the team.

Then he walked back on.

One week after Michigan’s national championship season ended, Mentzer rejoined the program. In 2024, he earned a varsity letter, received Academic All-Big Ten recognition, and got an extra point opportunity against Northwestern.

That part of the story gives Holder’s Hand more weight.

This is not an idea from someone who watched specialists from a distance. This is an idea from someone who lived the position closely enough to understand the details most people miss.

He knew the pressure of the specialist room.

He knew the standard at Michigan.

He knew the frustration of training on his own.

He knew what it felt like to be outside the roster and still keep thinking like a kicker.

That is where the product came from.

Not from a marketing angle.

From a lived problem.

More Honest Practice

The specialist world has changed.

There are more camps, more rankings, more film, more data, more exposure, and more ways for athletes to be seen than ever before. But underneath all of that, the daily work still matters most.

A kicker still has to train.

He still has to create confidence.

He still has to walk into a live operation and trust what he sees.

That is the part Holder’s Hand is trying to support.

It is not built to make kicking easier. It is built to make certain practice reps more honest. More connected to the visual a kicker will face when the ball is held by a person. More useful for the athlete trying to bridge the space between isolated work and real operation.

For young kickers, that can be especially valuable.

They are often learning the position in imperfect conditions. They may not have a specialist coach at school. They may not have consistent access to a snapper and holder. They may be trying to perform on Friday night after spending most of the week training in pieces.

When the full unit is not available, the work still has to happen.

Holder’s Hand gives that work a better picture.

Why This Belongs in The Unit

The Unit was built around the people, programs, tools, and voices helping specialists develop with more clarity.

Holder’s Hand belongs in that conversation because it is not built around hype. It is built around a practical problem in the specialist world.

A kicker working alone does not need more noise.

He needs better reps.

He needs tools that understand what the position actually asks of him. He needs training that prepares more than the leg. He needs confidence that can survive the transition from an empty field to a live operation.

Mentzer’s product speaks directly to that space.

It is simple. It is specific. It is rooted in the details of the position. And it came from someone who understood the gap well enough to try to close it.

That is the kind of story OTU was built to tell.

Because specialists deserve more than the final kick.

They deserve attention to the work that gets them there.

Final Word

The best specialist tools usually come from people who understand the details most people miss.

Holder’s Hand is built around one of those details.

A kicker does not just see the ball.

He sees the hold.
He sees the hand.
He sees the picture he has to trust when the moment arrives.

Charles Mentzer built Holder’s Hand because he knew solo practice was necessary, but he also knew it could be more game-like. For a position where confidence is built through repetition, that visual matters.

This is not about replacing the unit.

It is about helping kickers prepare for the unit when the unit is not available.

And sometimes, that is where real development starts.