It wasn't that long ago that Navy senior Pablo Beltran despised the thought of being a punter.

While growing up in the Houston suburb of Humble, Texas, Beltran played all kinds of sports - hockey, soccer, baseball and of course, football. In elementary school, he would have settled for any spot other than the guy responsible for surrendering possession of the ball on fourth down. That seemed so un-cool to him.

It's not that Beltran didn't enjoy booting the ball, as long as he was kicking it through uprights or swinging his booming right leg on a soccer field.

"As a kid, I think I took every free kick between the ages of eight and ten. I legitimately thought I would play soccer in college as a midfielder or a center back," Beltran recalled. "If I was going to play football, I wanted to be a tight end, linebacker or a quarterback or field goal kicker. I needed something cool, anything but a punter."

By the time he was a freshman at Atascocita High, which then was a new school, Beltran was decent at place kicking, and was beginning to explore that craft at specialized camps. But the turning point for Navy's future, four-year, fourth-down fixture came during that first high school season, when Beltran broke his arm and was forced to continue the year by wearing a huge cast.

That awkward piece of protection oddly helped to open his eyes to the possibilities of punting.

"I went out there [on the field] and realized I could still catch the snap and punt pretty well with a cast on my arm," he said. "It's strange, but that's when I started to like it."

When you watch Beltran doing his thing for the Midshipmen, when you watch the 6-feet-2, 225-pound specialist send the football high and far down the field with accuracy and consistency to help the Mids maintain good field position, he hardly resembles a guy who did not embrace this vital role until his final two seasons in high school.

All of which makes Beltran's body of work in Annapolis that much more impressive. Since the summer of 2011, following a solid year at the Naval Academy's prep school in Newport, R.I. and after overcoming the grueling backdrop of plebe summer to grab the punting job in his first preseason camp, Beltran has held that spot without being threatened.

Since becoming the first freshman punter at Navy since 1992, when Brian Schrum started nine games and averaged 38.7 yards per attempt, Beltran has been one of the program's best ever.

Through the first eight contests of 2014, his 41.5-yard average over 144 career punts ranks second best in Navy history. With a 44.5-yard average so far this fall, Beltran is on track for his best distance year yet.

"A lot of people don't realize Pablo has been a major part of the success of our team," said Ken Niumatalolo, Navy's seventh-year head coach, who is trying to guide the Mids to their sixth winning season and bowl-game appearance on his watch. "We've had him back there for so long that it's easy to take for granted the stability he brings us. I don't worry about him. But I'll get mad at him for kicking it only 40 yards with no return."

Like any accomplished punter, Beltran has reached this performance level because he is all about mastering the details that go deeper than average distance. That number only scratches the surface of a punter's effectiveness.

Beltran, who also has been the holder on extra points and field goals for the past two years, has done it all for the Mids.

He has been a dependable directional kicker by consistently angling punts toward either sideline, depending on the coverage scheme. He has been adept at dropping pooch kicks inside the opponents' 20-yard line. He rarely out-kicks his coverage with long kicks and great hang times that are wasted if the Navy pursuit can't get downfield to disrupt the punt return.

"When you hear that 'boom' [the sound of Beltran's right foot striking the ball], you know he's going in the right direction with it and you know the ball is going to be up there for a while," said senior lineman Nate Otto, who is part of the punt team. "The guy does it like an artist. Imagine if we had faster guys running down the field to cover his punts."

"[Beltran] is his own toughest critic," added senior long snapper Joe Cardona, whose four years of superb work in that role has gone hand in hand with Beltran's success. "No one [among viewers and spectators] will notice the intricacies of one of his 45-yard kicks that Pablo sees as a bad punt. That's what sets him apart."

In Beltran's eyes, what keeps him kicking at a high level - he has dropped 49 career punts inside the 20, only 17 have gone for touchbacks and he has never had a kick blocked - is constant diligence and calm in the face of a game's conditions.

"It's about dealing with the many moving parts around the punt. If you try to kill the ball, it's not going to go anywhere," he said. "A lot of guys can hit a bomb and turn over a pretty spiral - out of their hands in shorts and a tee shirt. It's about being able to do it with 50,000 people watching, with a snap coming at you, with a rush coming at you and a wall of blockers moving in front of you, under windy conditions in a tie game. Those things happen in every game. If you're not ready to answer that, the results will show it."

Beltran showed it literally on the first day he was faced with that list of conditions. On his first career punt against Delaware in the 2011 season-opening victory in Annapolis, he nailed a 47-yard blast into a brisk wind and placed it inside the Blue Hens' 20.

But the kid who seized a special teams role, despite the tired legs that all freshmen drag into football camp from plebe summer, was not that smooth just a few years earlier.

Midway through high school, Beltran had shown sure signs as a strong placekicker. But, according to Ken Stanley, the former special teams coach at Atacoscita High who arrived following Beltran's sophomore season, Beltran was a raw project who was unsure about his potential.

"Pablo had a really strong leg and a lot of ability. But, for whatever reason, he didn't have a lot of confidence in himself," said Stanley, who stays in touch with Beltran to this day. "At the end of his sophomore year, there was probably no one who thought that he was going to be a Division I kicker. I don't think he did.

"We had a good conversation that lasted for about an hour. We talked about weight training, conditioning, stretching the right way, paying attention to what he was eating. We talked about technique and about going to some kicking camps that summer before his junior year. I think Pablo just needed someone to come along who really believed in him."

Beltran concurred. "It wasn't until my junior year in high school that I realized I could really do something with this," he said.

By that point, Beltrand had attended a few kicking camps with some success. He had mingled with the likes of established notables such as Randy Bullock, who was already kicking at Texas A&M and eventually would be drafted by the Houston Texans; and Justin Laird, who had a star turn as a kicker at the University of Houston.

By the end of his junior season, Beltran broke through as a competitor. He split the uprights with a game-tying, 42-yard field goal in a first-round playoff game eventually won in overtime by Atascocita. It was the school's first-ever postseason victory, and it propelled Beltran to the first of two honors as an all-district kicker.

It also sent a very confident Beltran to more camps, where it was impossible not to notice him. At one Las Vegas camp the summer before his senior year in 2009, he competed against such specialists as Michigan State punter Mike Sadler, kicker/punter Drew Basil of Ohio State, and Tennessee punter Matt Darr. At another camp in Los Angeles, he went up against placekicker Cody Parkey, the Auburn product who is now employed by the Philadelphia Eagles.

"There were like 30 guys at that camp in L.A. who are playing Division I ball now. Joe Cardona was there too, but we didn't know each other then," Beltran said.

"I punted well enough to make the finals. I qualified as a combo guy [punter and kicker]. I competed against Cody Parkey and made my first kick, a 55-yard field goal. Cody shanks it, but this ugly kick goes through. Then we back up to 63 yards and Cody nails it. My leg gave out there."

But Beltran's collegiate options were opening up. He drew interest from Oklahoma State, Houston, Louisiana Tech, Vanderbilt, Army and Air Force. After he visited Stillwater and listened to an offer, he thought he was bound for Oklahoma State. But a call from Navy, which had read about him and seen clips of his work on kicking guru Chris Sailer's website, caused him to alter his thinking.

"My Mom kind of forced me to come up [to Annapolis] for a visit to watch the Wake Forest game [a 13-10 win in 2009]," Beltran said. "She fell in love with the place and I was taken aback, too. I started thinking if I came here I'd look back in 20, 30 or 40 years and say I made the right choice."

"I remember Pablo telling us when he was 16 that he wanted to be something special in this life. He didn't want to be an average guy," said Dan Olsen, Beltran's stepfather, who works as a chemical engineer. Beltran's mother, Patricia, is a massage therapist.

"For a while in high school, you had to drag him out of bed every morning," Olsen added. "But he had a way of knowing what he wanted and what he needed to do. He plunged himself into succeeding. Discipline became huge for him."

In May, Beltrand, who dreams about getting an NFL opportunity someday, will graduate with a degree in International Relations and will be commissioned a surface warfare officer. And Steve Johns, Navy's special teams coordinator, will have a serious hole to fill.

"Specialists like Pablo and Joe [Cardona] are very hard to come by. Most kickers are kind of weird, pampered, spoiled," Johns said. "Pablo was never that way. He came in here with a maturity and he's always gotten along with everybody. It helps that he's surprisingly athletic to go with that strong leg. He's been Steady Eddie back there. We're going to miss him."