Kim Braswell, the left-footed placement practitioner for the Georgia Bulldogs in 1970-72 – one of the last of the “toe” kickers – has written a book.
It probably won’t make the best-sellers list, but it is an enlightening treatise about a young man who succeeded despite deafness and diabetes. Few athletes have persevered against the odds Kim faced growing up without giving in to adversity.
Kim’s view of life, his goals, and his mission, were all connected with a commitment to positive thinking. Non-athletes would benefit from his dissertation on how the mind can be just as important, perhaps even more so, than the physical. He has always been in step with Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking.
The title of Kim’s book could not be more appropriate for his well-chronicled biography. Kicking Adversity Aside is not about negatives or regrets, though many with his challenge might well have given up along the way. Kim certainly had those opportunities.
But there was never any self-doubt. His story is about faith and perseverance. He became the ant who moved the rubber tree plant, the little engine that could. With every good turn, he was overwhelmed with humility and gratitude. He was a competitor to the core, but arrogance never entered his sphere. Modesty and humility were constant companions.
In addition to football, Kim played baseball at UGA. In high school, he also played basketball. “More than once,” Kim recalls, “I stole the ball from my opponent and didn’t hear the referee’s whistle and dribbled the stolen ball the length of the court for a layup only to find out I had fouled him.”
Being deaf, but blessed with 20/20 vision, Kim could read lips almost a hundred yards away. His brother Gary was an excellent defensive player and even better at lip reading.
“If you see offensive coaches on TV covering their mouths with their hands or play sheet, you know why,” Kim says. “It was an advantage reading the opponents’ lips while playing defense until they figured it out and heard from other teams that you better turn your head away from the Braswells or they will read your lips.”
You could make a case that the art of lip reading in football began with Gary and Kim before television caused all those offensive coaches to cover their mouths when calling plays. According to Kim, “Gary deserves a spot in the lip-reading hall of fame.”
With parental encouragement and personal motivation, Kim (and his brothers) learned to excel in sports. Kim, his father taught him the art of placekicking. He walked around the yard practicing kicking. He kicked everything in sight, whether bottles, cans, or twigs.
He kicked by aiming at something, not just kicking for the sake of kicking. That enabled him to achieve a degree of accuracy that became a hallmark.
Kim lettered three years for the Bulldogs, the highlight coming when his field goal won the 1972 Florida game. With the score tied 7-7, Joe McPipkin recovered a Gator fumble at the Florida 30, late in the fourth quarter. Four plays later, Kim’s 37-yard field goal gave Georgia a 10-7 victory.
In the ensuing dog pile, Kim thought he might literally be crushed to death as the entire team swarmed on top of him. He survived, though, just like he has throughout life.
Following graduation, Kim entered the coaching profession, becoming a head coach at Harris County and then Henry County, teaching young kids the importance of succeeding in competition, but also about scholarship and citizenship, and the power of positive thinking and always looking on the bright side of life.
At Harris County, he took over a program that had never won a game. They broke even in Kim’s first season. In his second, they went 6-and-4, and Kim became a local hero.
When he moved on to Henry County, Kim found it similar to what had been in Harris. The football record was 1-29 when he arrived in McDonough, but by the second season, Kim had everybody smiling when his team won six games to bring the community out of the doldrums with its first winning season in years.
Kim would eventually win a region championship and was again the talk of the town. The citizens, school officials, and the kids all loved their coach.
Today, Kim is retired in Madison where he is close to his children and grandchildren. Close, too, to the hedges of Sanford Stadium in Athens where he finds himself as often as possible.
“I am a very fortunate man,” Kim says.
No, the University of Georgia is fortunate that he came the Bulldogs’ way.