DeKalb coach Vernon Pike waited for his quarterback to reach the sideline, ready to send in the play.

Instead, Jimmy Derry asked his coach if rather than a 2-point conversion try, the Tigers could go for an extra point. Not just any extra point — a drop kick.

Practiced for years in DeKalb, Derry was the first Tiger to convert a drop kick in a game, sending the ball through the uprights after the final touchdown in DeKalb’s 49-0 win last week against South Nodaway.

“This was the first time he said, 'Coach let’s try it,’” Pike said. “It wasn’t a real high or pretty kick, but it was right down the middle, just barely over the crossbar.”

The drop kick is an antiquated, legal form of making a field goal or an extra point.

On the play, a player takes a shotgun snap — usually 7 to 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage — drops the ball straight down and kicks it at the moment it touches the ground or shortly after.

The move was popular in the early days of football but fell out of favor when the football was made more pointed on the ends in 1934. The change helped the progression of the forward pass but made the drop kick nearly obsolete with the ball not bouncing as predictably.

“It’s still a legal kick, but no one really pays attention to it,” said Pike, who forgot to warn the referees last week before Derry’s attempt. “There wasn’t any confusion. But I had some of the (officials) tell me, 'Gosh, I haven’t seen that before — ever.’ They’re kind of shocked when it happens.”

Pike picked up the play from his father, Alpha Pike, a longtime football fan and member of East Buchanan’s chain gang in Gower, Mo. Pike has had multiple players practice it but never tried it until Derry failed an attempt last year against Heartland.

The last Missouri high school player to make a drop kick was Nevada’s Ronnie Herda in 2006.

In the NFL, Doug Flutie made a drop kick while playing for the New England Patriots in 2006 — the first in the league in more than 60 years. The last successful drop kick extra point in an NCAA game was by Aaron Fitzgerald of the University of LaVerne on November 10, 1990 against Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.