The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Australian punter Magliozzi kicking it in Storrs
EAST HARTFORD » Randy Edsall knows as well as anybody that it can be a rather daunting task for players from Australia to come over to the United States to play college football.
Adam Coles punted for Edsall’s UConn teams from 200003 and is in the top three in pretty much every punting category in program history. When he left for Maryland, one of his more productive players was Brad Craddock, a kicker from Down Under.
However, as Edsall received updates on punter Luke Magliozzi’s rather daunting task of actually getting to the UConn campus, he could only shake his head in amazement.
“What he did to get here, we saw some video when he was up at Ottawa waiting to get his passport, he waited in this hostel and it was this old jail,” Edsall said. “He sent up video of it and I said man, how many of our guys would do that and he was pretty much doing that stuff on his own.”
Magliozzi is a 23-year-old who worked as a plumber the last four years. However, as an athlete who first started playing Australian Rules Football when he was 4 or 5, he decided that there are more games left for him to play so he got involved with ProKick Australia, an organization that has been training kickers and punters for a decade with the intention of having them play American Football. Magliozzi decided to try to
add to the alumni of the organization who have played college football in the United States.
“It was frustrating at first, we were kicking across my body and we had to change our technique,” Magliozzi said. “Some days I felt like quitting because it wasn’t for me and wasn’t going well.”
Magliozzi stuck with it with plenty of assistance from his coaches and support from his family.
Following the graduation of punter Justin Wain, redshirt freshman Brett Graham was the only punter on the roster when Edsall took over the program. Edsall decided to explore his options resulting in Magliozzi becoming the oldest member of the UConn freshman class as well as the last one to arrive.
“I had to give up everything,” Magliozzi said. “It was a tough decision.”
The decision probably wasn’t as difficult as the odyssey he has taken from his Westmeadows, Australia home to Storrs.
It started about a month ago as he headed on a tour with ProKick Australia featuring stops in Los Angeles, Utah, Memphis and New Orleans.
“I am really tired getting on planes and getting off, hotels all over the place,” Magliozzi said. “As soon as I landed in New Orleans, I was told that my visa was ready to get picked up, went to Connecticut to pick it up and went straight to Canada.”
He needed to study and take his SAT and handle some other paperwork before he was allowed to return to Connecticut and take part in preseason camp.
Magliozzi never visited UConn before he committed and admitted that his knowledge of his new school is pretty much limited to, “I knew it was a good basketball school and a big school.”
Besides an incredible case of jet lag, Magliozzi is also getting used to the size of the rosters in American football. He said typically an Australian Rules Football team consists of about 40 players.
When he played for St. Albans’ Under 18 team in the Western Region Football League in 2012, that roster had just 21 athletes on it.
“It’s a different culture, two different balls, a lot different from home,” Magliozzi said.
Edsall has encouraged Magliozzi to take a deep breath or two when he first hit the practice field. He appeared to be pressing a little bit as he tried to impress his new coaches and teammates.
“What they do over there, it is a little different,” Edsall said. “I haven’t had Luke talk to the team yet but at some point I am going to have him talk to the team and just kind of tell them his story and his background.”