Punt How to take a on a role in theNFL
Former NFL offensive lineman Mark Nua is trying to help young Polynesian kids get to the US on scholarships – but, writes Troels Sommerville, the road is harder than he thought.
Mark Nua’s journey to the National Football League (NFL) started when a newspaper clipping about a two-metre, 190kg shot putter from Penrose made its way to the coaching staff at the University of Hawaii.
Awoman had sent the clipping to her son, a swimmer at the school, who then passed it on to the athletic department. Excited at seeing the raw potential of the then-teenage Nua, and given it was the mid80s, the school’s coaches called each ‘‘Nua’’ in the Auckland phonebook until they found him.
Once they got through to the right house ‘‘it all happened pretty quickly’’, Nua said. He studied for and sat his SAT exams and gained his high school equivalency aned earnt a one-way ticket to the island state, where he would spend the next five years.
He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in sociology. While Nua went undrafted out of college, he was picked up by the NFL’s Detroit Lions as a free agent. Eventually he landed on the San Diego Chargers, where he went head-to-head with NFL Hall of Famer Junior Seau every day at practice.
‘‘It was so easy to get a foot in the door when I did it back then,’’ Nua said, nearly 30 years later. ‘‘I just don’t understand why it has to be so much harder for kids today.’’
He and fellow football coach George Taulealea are trying to send other young, athletic ‘‘winners of the genetic lottery’’ on a path to a highly-prized free university education in the United States.
They believe South Auckland’s large Polynesian community is fertile ground for finding young athletes as the average height and weight for an offensive lineman in the SEC, the premier division in college football, is six-foot-five (1.98m) and 141kg.
‘‘The explosive, physical traits of a lineman are all natural down here – you look at these kids and you think ‘you’ve got it all’,’’ Taulealea said.
And they’re probably right. According to The Wall Street Journal, American Samoa has the highest per capita percentage of players in the NFL of any US
state or territory and that same potential lies here in New Zealand. Only, getting the kids up to scratch is proving to be harder than they expected.
Many of the kids they see can match it athletically, Taulealea said, but academically they’re not willing to put in the work. ‘‘You get kids who aren’t the full package. We can only do so
much to help them, we point them to where they need to go to get the schoolwork up to scratch, but they just don’t go.’’
There are no ways around the academic criteria. Because the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) dictates anyone with a grade point average below a C is ineligible to take the field, coaches won’t look at players who don’t show the potential to keep up with schoolwork.
The other part of the problem is that there are only 13 clubs in Aotearoa and some of them play only a scaled back, non-contact version called flag football.
It’s an issue Russell McConchie, the New Zealand American Football Federation’s general manager and only paid employee, has to deal with as he tries to build the profile of the game.
He said it’s important to get players involved in the sport as early as possible in order to build a skill-set and the ever-important highlight film that gets sent to recruiters. But when he heads into schools, they often turn their noses up.
‘‘If you were looking out for the kids of your school, you’d give them a shot so that a pathway like this was open to them,’’ McConchie said. ‘‘But the answer is obvious when you look at some schools where the rugby coach is paid more than the principal.’’
It’s why Nua and Taulealea have been trying to recruit kids
as young as they can but, so far, that success has been elusive.
‘‘You’ve got to get a couple of runs on the board first,’’ said Australian punting coach Nathan Chapman.
He’s aman who is perfectly situated to give Nua and Taulealea advice on offering a ‘‘unique’’ talent pool of players to the sometimes tunnel-visioned US scouts.
The players he exports aren’t behemoths, rather young Australian kickers who grew up punting balls around Australian Rules grounds in Victoria.
After a brief career with the Brisbane Lions and Hawthorn Hawks in the AFL, he gave the NFL a crack andgot on the preseason roster for the Green Bay Packers. It didn’t work out, but it showed him he was sitting on a treasure trove of talent back in Melbourne, where he is now based.
For the past 14 years he has been slowly building the brand of Prokick Australia in the minds of US scouts. He has sent 150 punters and kickers over on scholarships – 50 of those in the past 12 months.
‘‘You gotta get it right at the start and have the coach want to see where they came from and why they need to make an international trip to come and see them,’’ Chapman said.
‘‘We had to make sure that we didn’t put someone over there just for the sake of getting the scholarship, we had to put them somewhere they were going to perform and thrive. There’s a real package surrounding this to make it enticing for the colleges. You don’t just get the scholarship because you’re big and strong, you get it because you’re big and strong and have the grades to go.’’
One of those ‘‘package players’’ is former Sacred Heart College rugby player, James Evans.
In January next year the 19-year-old Aucklander will start his four-year scholarship at Indiana University after he was recruited as a punter through the Prokick Australia programme.
An impressive achievement considering the former first-five has never played a game of American football. After he quit rugby, people kept chirping in his ear about how big a kick he had, so he thought he’d take a punt on his own ability and try for a chance at an all-expensespaid ride through college.
Ever the motivated selfstarter, Evans convinced his dad of the idea and soon his bags were packed andhe was off to Melbourne for three months of training at Prokick. While there he also studied for his entrance exams, so he wouldn’t fall at the last hurdle.
He aced the tests, scoring in the top 10 per cent of all those who took the SATs – American high schoolers included. So it wasn’t long before he got a call from Indiana’s head coach Tom Allen offering him a full scholarship.
But his goal wasn’t only to play football, it was to get into a college with awell-regarded business school because he knows the likelihood of moving into the NFL is slim.
‘‘I haven’t thought too much about the future, I’ve still got four or five years of college ahead of me,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m just trying to stay grounded. Right now it’s just baby steps.’’
He understands not everyone has the same opportunity to go to another country to receive specialist training like he did.
‘‘The old man really came through for me. We did the math and, if it paid off, then this was a small drop in the ocean for what the scholarship is worth,’’ Evans said.
‘‘I imagine if I was to do it myself, and in New Zealand, then I wouldn’t be able to do this.’’
Regardless, Nua is determined to help kids from his old stomping ground get a shot at a similar education to the one he had.
‘‘I wasn’t Einstein when I was at school, but I studied for three months before my SATs, and I managed to pass. So if I can do it, anyone can.’’
We can only do so much to help them, we point them to where they need to go to get the schoolwork up to scratch, but they just don’t go.’ GEORGE TAULEALEA