Steve Kuehn was planning on his right leg to be a valuable tool for the Panther football team this season. Then, that very leg gave out on him.

The senior kicker that had started in each of his three seasons at Eastern suffered a severe hamstring injury in the final conditioning drill during the summer.

“When it first happened, I thought I’d be out for the year,” Kuehn said. “The trainer said I’ll be ready to start kicking against BYU (Sept. 10).”

During a running drill, Kuehn was striding to finish and said he knew exactly what happened immediately.

“I was just running and heard two loud pops,” Kuehn said.

Kuehn, who suffered a torn groin muscle twice during his sophomore season, said that this injury was similar.

“When I tore my groin it felt the same thing but that was more of a rip,” Kuehn said.

The sudden injury forced an instant competition between two kickers with no college game experience.

“That’s the one thing that Steve brought to the table is game experience,” Eastern special teams coordinator Jeff Choate said.

Red-shirt freshman Tyler Wilke won the placekicking job over true freshman Zach Yates for the Sept.1 season opener at Indiana State.

The Highland native earned All-Mississippi Valley Conference honors as a senior at Highland High School after he kicked three game-winning field goals that season.

“In high school, I didn’t have to worry about losing my job,” Wilke said. “Now if I have a bad day in practice I could be second or third string.”

After hearing the news, Wilke wasted no time giving his quarterback confidence in his length.

“I’ve already told (starting quarterback Mike) Donato that you get the ball inside the 35 and we’re good,” Wilke said.

Choate has no reservations about attempting a 52-yard field goal with his young kickers.

“Depending upon the conditions and the situation in the game, I think that’s a reasonable expectation,” Choate said. “I think these guys would rather go out there than play the field position game with a punt.”

With five games last season finishing within a touchdown, Wilke talked about his mindset about possibly being asked to win the contest in his first game in a Panther uniform.

“Nothing is going be close to (playing) at the D-I level,” Wilke said. “It’s up to me whether or not I can do the job. We’ll find out.”