Grant Mahoney didn't get to celebrate many victories during his football career at Linn-Mar, which came to an end in the fall of 2007.

That's one of the reasons his decision to attend college and play football at Iowa State in Ames, a short two-hour drive from his Marion hometown, has turned out to be a pretty good one so far. Victory celebrations became somewhat commonplace last season, Mahoney's sophomore year at ISU.

"Absolutely," Mahoney said in a telephone interview while back home in Marion last weekend, when asked if his decision to become a Cyclone was a good one. "I love it there."

Mahoney, a 2008 Linn-Mar graduate, was originally recruited to Iowa State by former coach Dan McCarney and was brought to Ames by former coach Gene Chizek, whom Mahoney played for his freshman season. Coach Paul Rhodes arrived on campus last season and led the Cyclones to a 7-6 record, including a win over Minnesota in the Insight Bowl in Tempe, Ariz. in late December.

Those were seven wins for Mahoney to celebrate, and he gives a lot of the credit to the arrival of Rhodes.

"At first we weren't certain what to expect with Coach Rhodes, but after we got to work with him more, we realized he was a real genuine guy and we knew he really wanted to be here," Mahoney said. "We knew we got a real good coach and he's real passionate about being here."

Iowa State's 2010 season opens at Jack Trice Stadium on Thursday, Sept. 2, against Northern Illinois. It's the start of a season in which the Cyclones will play one of the nation's most difficult schedules, including home games with Utah and Nebraska, and road games at Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas, teams that appear in most of the preseason top-25 polls released so far.

Mahoney insists the Cyclones are undaunted.

"We have high expectations, even with our schedule being tough," Mahoney said. "We're expecting ourselves to get back to a bowl game and finish up well in the Big 12."

Mahoney is spending the summer in Ames with the rest of the football team, and there isn't a whole lot of down time. To be competitive in the ultra-competitive Big 12 Conference, players must be willing to put in the extra time. This is what D-I football athletes do.

"We all just work with our strength and conditioning staff," Mahoney said. "We'll run on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and lift on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And us kickers and punters have been getting out two or three times a week kicking and punting with each other."

Mahoney, who enters his junior season listed at 6-foot, 168-pounds, has been very productive in his first two seasons at ISU.

Last year he became the first kicker in school history to boot three field goals of 50 yards or more in the same season, including a back-breaking 52-yarder in the Cyclones' 9-7 upset of Nebraska. He finished 13-of-20 in field goal attempts and 26-of-30 on his PATs.

He was 17-of-25 in field goal kicking and a perfect 33-of-33 in PATs his freshman season in 2008. He's led the Cyclones in scoring each of the last two seasons.

Mahoney, a marketing major at ISU, feels like he's coming into this season stronger than he's ever been.

"I'm just going to do what I can to help my team win, but my thing is I'm going to try to get more touchbacks (on kickoffs). I haven't had many touchbacks in college yet, so I'm trying to get my leg stronger," he said. "And, of course, they always want me to be perfect on field goals, but my main focus is getting touchbacks."

The football season is almost upon us, and Linn-Mar grad Grant Mahoney seems ready to kick some, uh, field goals on the fields of the Big 12 this fall. Sure it's a tough schedule, but Mahoney and the rest of the Cyclones are convinced they're up to the task.