Kickers are like car insurance: You have to have it, you hope to not have to use it, and you get out what you put into it.

Have a sub-par kicker? Things can come to a crashing halt.

In some situations, it’s not even about being without a good kicker, rather without a backup plan — like not having a spare tire. In other situations, the snap or the hold can put a dent into a kicker’s chances.

But when a snap and hold are right, the kicker is confident and his team is confident in him, it gives a team an advantage.

“When you’re looking at — I don’t know what the rate would be for a two-point conversion, maybe 50 percent — and you start looking at the last two weeks, (Tyler Cote) is 10-for-10, and when it becomes automatic, it’s an automatic seven points, it is a nice luxury to have,” Winthrop/Monmouth coach Dave St. Hilaire said.

Cote has been one of the best kickers among local football teams. According to available 2016 box scores, the Ramblers’ place kicker is 15-for-18 on point-after attempts, with two of those misses being blocked. He’s also 1-for-2 on field goals, the make coming from 27 yards.

Not every team is so fortunate.

The conversion percentage among local teams is 63.4 percent, and teams have attempted PATs after only 57.1 percent of touchdowns. Four teams are below 50 percent, and four haven’t made an extra-point, according to the available data.

Lisbon is one of those teams yet to make an extra point. That is partly due to a lack of attempts.

“We go for two points out of necessity right now,” Lisbon coach Dick Mynahan said.

The Greyhounds are trying to prepare a trustworthy kicker for the playoffs, but Mynahan said he’s not ready to put one in a pressure situation right now.

Mynahan knows all too well about the importance of the point-after. It’s cost his team a valuable point in the past two Class D South regional finals. In the 2014 final, the Greyhounds went for two to try and take an 8-7 lead. The conversion failed and they fell 7-6.

A year ago, a rally from a 21-0 deficit fell one point short, thanks to a botched extra-point play.

Mynahan called his team’s recent string of luck the jinx of the extra point.

“I prefer the kick,” Mynahan said. “We just haven’t been lucky lately to have that kind of kicker.”

Gray-New Gloucester had that kind of kicker two years ago in soccer standout Tyler St. Pierre, who moonlighted as the football team’s kicker. He would have been useful for the Patriots two weeks ago, in a 7-6 loss to Lake Region. Gray-New Gloucester scored first, went for two, but couldn’t convert. The Lakers countered with their own touchdown, and converted soccer player Paul Walker made the game-winning PAT.

What St. Pierre did takes some creative time management from the player in question, who must spend a certain amount of practice time with a team to be able to play in games. Spruce Mountain coach David Frey said he remembers back to his time at Livermore Falls, when the football team used to borrow soccer players for PATs.

It’s easier when a player like Walker decides to make the switch full-time from soccer to football.

Otherwise, it takes a natural athlete, like St. Hilaire said he has in Cote, to get the job done.

“We found out last year that he was a really good kicker,” St. Hilaire said. “We had some miscues earlier in the season with our protection and whatnot, but he’s become pretty automatic the last couple weeks. We knew he can boom the ball.”

Mountain Valley uses a similar approach: star running back Kyle Farrar handles the kicks.

“Kyle had an off-day against Freeport on Saturday, missed two extra-point attempts, but overall we consider him to be automatic from just about anywhere on the field,” Falcons coach Pat Mooney said. “He has kicked field goals from 45 yards in pregame kicking and is 10-for-14 on the season in PAT conversions. I have no trouble using him in any kicking situation, whether it be PAT attempts, field goals, or kickoffs.”

The Falcons found out what life is like without Farrar’s kicking in a close loss to Yarmouth early in the season. Farrar left the game early with a hip injury. He wasn’t available to kick in that game, and Mooney had to resort to using a couple of inexperienced kickers. The Falcons had to go for two to score the game-tying points against the Clippers, but couldn’t convert and ultimately lost the game 27-25. Made PATs at Farrar’s conversion percentage would have meant 27 points for the Falcons, and making all of them would have meant a one-point win.

Kickers come in all shapes and sizes.

Frey turns to starting center/linebacker Devan Pomeroy for kicks. The Phoenix are an interesting study in point-after situations, having attempted 20 PATs and gone for two nine times, according to Sun Journal box scores. Pomeroy has made 11 of those PATs, with some of the non-conversions having been blocked. Frey said he’s “pretty confident” in Pomeroy.

Spruce Mountain practices those situations. But Frey also said he expects Pomeroy to practice kicks on his own. He would like to be able to practice kicks with Pomeroy more, but practice time is at a premium for all teams.

“Sometimes I think (special teams) are more neglected just because you work more on your defense and your offense, to get them prepared for the upcoming week,” Frey said. “I feel sometimes we should work on it more than we do, but when you only have so much time you got to work on other things. We try to work on special teams every day when we get a chance.”

St. Hilaire said his team started devoting more time to special teams last year, after not being happy with that unit from the year prior.

“It’s usually 10 or 15 minutes, but when you total it up — in double sessions we would do 20 minutes a day — and it adds up,” St. Hilaire said. “We spend time at every practice in special teams. (Tyler) gets two days of PAT work. He’s also our punter and our second kickoff guy. He gets reps in both of those departments.”

St. Hilaire echoed Frey’s sentiment that the third phase of football is the forgotten child.

“I think (special teams) is the one that’s overlooked,” St. Hilaire said. “When you figure there’s four downs per (drive), special teams sometimes is almost 25 percent of the game. There’s all three phases, and we work to make sure that we’re the best we can be in all three phases — offense, defense and special teams.”

St. Hilaire said his team breaks down special teams film, and they’ve studied the timing of kick plays, from snap to hold to kick.

“We time it to make sure that we’re executing it at the right time,” St. Hilaire said. “It would have to be a breakdown in our protection to be blocked.”

Cote has a range of about 40 yards and in, and St. Hilaire is confident in his senior hitting anything inside 35 yards. It’s kicking confidence that the Ramblers think is an advantage for them come playoff time.

Lisbon hopes to get there by the start of the postseason. Mynahan said he thinks his team is at a disadvantage for not having a reliable kicker at the moment.

He hopes to not be kicking himself for not having one if the Greyhounds make it back to the regional final.

wkramlich@sunjournal.com