Salisbury native kicks Orange Bowl winner

Jeter earned the nickname “Mr. January” from his Notre Dame teammates.

Notre Dame place kicker Mitch Jeter (98) kicks the game winning field goal in the Orange Bowl College Football Playoff semifinal game against Penn State. (Rebecca Blackwell / AP Photo)

North Carolina’s own Mitch Jeter, a Salisbury native and graduate of Cannon High School in Concord, might’ve etched himself a space in the long, storied history of Notre Dame football on Jan. 9.

In the College Football Playoff Semifinal Orange Bowl matchup between No. 7 Notre Dame, the team with the worst regular season field goal percentage in the FBS, and No. 6. Penn State, Jeter flipped the Irish’s luck with a game-winning 41-yard field goal that put Notre Dame in the national championship game for the first time since 2013. The Fighting Irish will play No. 8 Ohio State at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta Monday at 7:30 p.m.

“We were going down there, driving. I was getting prepared to go out there and kick,” Jeter told reporters after the game. “They had the ball, threw an interception. That’s when it was really like, ‘Alright, it’s going to come down to a kick. Let’s go make it.’ So, I was able to go out there, come in and execute.”

Jeter said he didn’t feel any nerves before the kick.

“To go out there and just do what I do thousands of times, just to be able to go out there and hopefully give our team a chance to achieve team glory, it’s what Coach Freeman obviously often talks about,” Jeter said. “Just happy to do that for our team.”

According to Jeter, that was his first game-winning field goal in the final seconds, but the graduate student who spent his first four collegiate seasons at South Carolina wasn’t exactly a stranger to game-deciding kicks prior to making it.

At No. 8 Clemson in 2022, Jeter hit a 35-yard field goal in the beginning of the fourth quarter to give the Gamecocks the 31-30 edge needed to knock off their in-state rival.

In his Notre Dame debut against Texas A&M in August, Jeter went 3-for-3, scored the Irish’s first six points and hit the game-sealing field goal to put Notre Dame up 23-13 with 30 seconds remaining in the game.

However, with his successes at South Carolina and a solid start at his new home, it wasn’t always certain that he could just go out and “execute.”

For one, Jeter had two kicks blocked, including what would’ve been the game winner, in a 16-14 loss to Northern Illinois the very next week after his Notre Dame debut.

Then, against Miami (OH) two weeks later, Jeter injured his hip. He kicked one more game against Louisville on Sept. 28 before experiencing another injury to his groin against Stanford on Oct. 12. Jeter was forced to sit out of the following Georgia Tech and Navy games.

But instead of rejuvenation coming out of his absence, Jeter experienced more disappointment. He missed four out of five field goal attempts in the final four games of the regular season, a major concern for a team preparing to face the best teams in the country on the way to a national title.

Luckily for Jeter, he could turn to his father Andrew, a practicing chiropractor who runs Jeter Chiropractic Clinic in Salisbury, for help. ESPN’s Andrea Adelson reported after the Orange Bowl that Jeter’s father would go to South Bend, Indiana for several days to help him get his body aligned and back to 100% prior to the postseason.

The hometown help seemed to work in the playoffs as Jeter made two kicks in the CFP First Round win over Indiana. Against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, he became the first kicker in CFP history to make three field goals of at least 40 yards in a single game.

“Coach Freeman talks a lot about delayed gratification,” Jeter said. “He’s been talking like that all the way back to week two when the NIU game happened. 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.”

Jeter now dons the nickname “Mr. January” given by his teammates following the win over Penn State. There’s one more game left this month to fully back up that honor, but after getting Notre Dame back in position to reclaim its glory, players and fans feel like he’s already worthy.

Just in case he needs to prove it one last time, Jeter plans to make sure the newfound confidence doesn’t change his focus.

“Every kick’s different,” Jeter said. “Next week, I’m going to go out and go through my same process as I did this week, as I did last week, as I’ve done every single week this season.”