HONOLULU (AP) — Kansei Matsuzawa became an instant star this year, with game-tying and game-winning field goals in a 23-20 victory win over Stanford and a singular backstory about teaching himself to kick on YouTube.
The Japan-born Matsuzawa’s near-perfect performance during the rest of Hawaii’s 8-4 season was even more impressive.
He made 25 consecutive field goals, tying a 43-year-old Football Bowl Subdivision record and earning first-team status as an Associated Press All-American as one the best players in the country. He was a finalist for the Lou Groza award given to the nation’s top place-kicker.
“In every moment, I always choose win. Even if I want to go home, just choose when to stay on campus and do something extra,” Matsuzawa said before his final game this week. “And that was the mindset I have this year, and because of that now I get recognition from (the) entire country and also back home in Japan.”
Dubbed the “Tokyo Toe” by teammates, he graduated this month and will take the field for the Rainbow Warriors for the last time in Wednesday’s Hawaii Bowl against California.
He has a chance of playing in the National Football League just six years after he attending his first football game. Back then, he didn’t understand the rules and knew just one player’s name: Tom Brady.
Finding kickers on YouTube
Matsuzawa’s unlikely path to college football dates to 2019. The high school soccer player failed annual college entrance exams in Japan two years in a row and didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He was 20 years old and depressed.
“I had nothing. I lost my purpose of my life,” Matsuzawa said in an interview.
His father gave him a ticket to travel to the U.S. and see a world outside Japan. He flew to California with no agenda other than to watch an NFL game, a sport he had some affinity for because his father was a fan and they had watched Super Bowls together.
He didn’t fully understand what he saw on the field at Oakland Coliseum. But the energy and fan enthusiasm at the stadium was different from what he had experienced in Japanese sports. Once back home, he decided he would return to the U.S., become a kicker and play in the NFL.
American football is a obscure sport in Japan, ranking below baseball, soccer, sumo, golf, skating and other pastimes in popularity. Matsuzawa wanted to learn from the best, an NFL player, but there weren’t any in Japan. So he imitated kickers on YouTube, particularly Jason Myers of the Seattle Seahawks. He liked Myers’ style, tempo and rhythm. He told his family and a few friends but otherwise kept his plans a secret to avoid skeptics.
There are only a few football fields with goal posts in Japan, but one was an hour’s commute from his house. He begged its owners, the Fujitsu Frontiers of a Japanese industrial league, to let him practice there in exchange for running team errands.
Grit to overcome adversity
After two years of practicing and saving money from a steakhouse job, he sent video clips of himself kicking to U.S. junior college teams. Hocking College in tiny Nelsonville, Ohio, gave him a chance. He says he knew so little English he barely spoke the first three months. He’s not sure anyone there had ever seen a Japanese person before.
The culture shock didn’t deter him.
“Nothing beats me,” he said with a smile.
He eventually made it on a list of top kicking prospects. Hawaii’s coordinator for special teams noticed Matsuzawa’s leg strength and power, form and technique. It was Matsuzawa’s resilience and overcoming of adversity that prompted Thomas Sheffield to recruit him.
“That’s what it’s going to take to be successful,” Sheffield said.
Matsuzawa was a walk-on, but got a scholarship a year ago and sobbed as his coach told him the good news. He was thinking of his parents, he says, who downsized their home to save money and help cover his costs, and of his grandparents, who paid his Hawaii tuition.
Adjusting to the intensity of FBS play took time. Sheffield left him off the travel roster for a Vanderbilt game his first year but Matsuzawa picked himself up. He focused on doing small things right every day and said he gradually earned the respect of his teammates and coaches.
“It goes back to the grit and him finding a way to put him in a situation to fulfill his dreams,” Sheffield said.
The right mindset
Matsuzawa worked with a sports psychologist twice a week this season, which he said helped. Last season, when he was 12 for 16 on field goal attempts, he set his mind on results like kicking farther and boosting his statistics. This year, he’s focused on process, on kicking footballs and staying positive.
“Luckily my job is simple, making field goal, and that’s what I want to do,” Matsuzawa said. “Just one at a time. Go out there, kick.”
Matsuzawa credits his special teams unit for his achievements and said he will treasure their connection for the rest of his life. His holder, Caleb Freeman, said he would do anything for Matsuzawa’s success.
“It’s real easy for the position he’s in to kind of take the spotlight and run with it,” Freeman said. “But ever since the Stanford game, (when) he made the game-winning field goal, he has always just shined the light on everyone else.”
The NFL has players of Japanese ancestry, like Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels whose great-grandmother is Japanese. Historically a dozen players have listed a birthplace in Japan, according to Elias Sports Bureau, but their backgrounds indicate they were mostly born to parents serving overseas in the U.S. military.
Hawaii coach Timmy Chang is confident Hawaii and Japan will be rooting for him.
“I think he’s going to do well,” Chang said, “if he continues his mindset and the track in which he’s at and all the things that made him who he is.”
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