Early on, Zane Gonzalez, last year's Lou Groza award winner for top college kicker and now a Cleveland Browns player, stood out, since no kids around him growing up shared his peculiar name.
His father picked the unusual first name, Gonzalez, 22, explained in a phone conversation. "I never ran into any other Zane."
There was also a juxtaposition raised by his last name and his appearance.
"My dad's side is all Mexican. A lot of people don't realize, because I'm blond, blue-eyed -- they don't expect the Gonzalez last name," said the former Arizona State University player. "Whether I'm getting a haircut, or something, they'll get caught off-guard when they hear the name. It's unique; I like it."
Gonzalez’s mother is from Arkansas. His parents separated when he was in the fifth grade and he and his siblings lived with his father, Joseph. Gonzalez has an older brother, Zach, and a younger sister, Skylar. Though his father is fluent in Spanish, Gonzalez doesn’t speak the language.
"I give him a hard time for not teaching me when I was younger," Gonzalez admitted.
His father did instruct Gonzalez, a Texas native, in something else.
"My dad was a big soccer player growing up," said Gonzalez. "That was my whole life, too, and my brother's [too]. We grew up playing soccer all over the Houston area. It was my first love as a sport. I still play to this day, whenever I'm around a soccer ball."
Because of his interest in soccer, Gonzalez was a latecomer to football. After backing away from competitive club play in high school, he was grateful to the coaches who helped guide him when he made the transition to football after recognizing an opportunity to earn a college scholarship.
"As a freshman, sophomore [in high school], if someone said, 'Zane, You’re going to be a drafted kicker,' I'd have probably laughed a little bit at it. It's awesome to see where I'm at now," he said.
Kickers are to a degree isolated in a game, usually trotting onto the field only for field goals or to position opponents far away on punts and kickoffs, but they can make a crucial difference.
"You give your team a better chance to win when you put points on the board," Gonzalez noted.
One who should know is former NFL kicker Luis Zendejas, now a community relations director for the Arizona Cardinals. The ex-player for the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles believes Gonzalez is ready for the pressure at the NFL level.
"From the first year [at ASU], he's always progressed," Zendejas said, claiming the senior year of Gonzalez showed his capability. "More power, more consistency. I went to every game and he was focused."
The biggest adjustment between the two sports was a mental one.
"Soccer is really interactive," Gonzalez said. "If you mess up, you always keep going. Kicking, if you do mess up, you have to make sure you're mentally strong enough to go to the sideline and forget about it and move on to the next kick."
Playing soccer still brings Gonzalez a sense of peace. He needed it earlier this year during the NFL draft, when he was nervously waiting to see if he would become the rare kicker to earn a draft selection. He got the news at the family beach house in Galveston, Texas, with his father, brother and sister, though Gonzalez had given up watching the draft on television.
He coped with the uncertainty by returning to his first sporting love, even as he kept his phone in his pocket. "I went outside and I started kicking the soccer ball around with my brother on the beach."
Gonzalez was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the seventh round as the 224th pick. He was not the first kicker selected in the 2017 draft. That honor went to Jake Elliott, whom the Cincinnati Bengals, the cross-state rivals of the Browns, selected with the 153rd pick. Although he is friends with Elliot and texted him congratulations, Gonzalez now has extra motivation.
Zane Gonzalez slipping to the 7th round was only the second biggest travesty that happened during the NFL Draft. pic.twitter.com/Gkd5ob0ygF
— Devil'sJunkiePodcast (@ASU_Rivals) May 1, 2017
"Everybody wants to be the top guy," admitted Gonzalez. "A little chip on your shoulder to help you compete, to make you better."
"I was very surprised that he wasn't the first kicker taken," Zendejas said. "He's a very mature kicker, so I really don't see him having problems in the NFL at all."
It's possible Gonzalez slipped down the draft board due to his honesty about his obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD. Since he was a freshman at ASU, Gonzalez has been public about coping with it.
Philip Pierce, a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in OCD, affirmed the condition can be managed, though people affected have to continuously battle their own thought process.
"They get thoughts which trigger anxiety and then they try to get rid of the anxiety, usually by physical action," Pierce explained. "The classic example is that they get a thought that their hands are contaminated and they wash their hands, which offers some temporary relief."
There is a wide range of OCD, but at any level it isn’t easy to deal with.
"People who joke, 'Oh, I’m a little OCD,' may not have it at all," Pierce said.
"It makes you a perfectionist and more detail oriented," Gonzalez said about how his OCD affects him. "Off the field, it's a pain in the butt."
One way Gonzalez copes during a game is to keep his pre-kick preparation simple.
"I just get a couple of practice kicks, a couple of leg swings, and then I cross myself," Gonzalez said.
As much as he can, Gonzalez repeats his routine and his short run up to the ball exactly the same way every time, with such mechanically sound and impressive results that he was given the nickname "Legatron" by ASU fans.
Zane Gonzalez (@ZaneG_5) ties #SeniorBowl record with 3 FGs #Legatron in his last outing with an #ASU helmet on: https://t.co/6271VK8d2E
— House of Sparky (@HouseOfSparky) January 28, 2017
Pierce stated Gonzalez, through simply being honest about dealing with OCD, can help others. Many people struggle to hide OCD symptoms, feeling ashamed.
Gonzalez can be a role model in another way. The NFL was once replete with Latino kickers, many of them who switched over from soccer. Mexicans or Mexican-Americans who forged NFL kicking careers include the Zendejas brothers, Max and Luis; their cousin, Tony Zendejas; Danny Villanueva, Daniel Sepulveda, Leo Araguz and Raul Allegre. Argentine Martin Gramatica (whose brother Bill also kicked in the NFL) , was so successful in the league that his nickname was "Automática."
Though Gonzalez said he knew of Gramatica and respected him, he picked as his top role model another Houston native now in the NFL.
"Justin Tucker, the way he goes about kicking," Gonzalez said, specifying the qualities he respects in Tucker, a Ravens kicker. "His confidence and demeanor and consistency; it’s something to look up to and admire a lot."
"Everybody out there is the top level. There's definitely not as much playfulness. You're a professional. You have to act like it." Kicker Zane Gonzalez
Tucker has been a revelation for the Baltimore Ravens after originally going undrafted in 2012. Last year, in a surprising move, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers traded up to spend a second round draft pick on kicker Roberto Aguayo.
Though Aguayo, who like Gonzalez is of Mexican heritage, only briefly played soccer as a child before moving on to football kicking, he struggled somewhat in his rookie NFL season, finishing with a 71 percent field goal completion. This might have made some teams think twice about drafting a kicker who converted to football after playing soccer, like Gonzalez.
"The goalposts are the same, the fields are the same, the footballs are almost the same -- it's only the added pressure that you put on yourself, because now you're getting paid money instead of going to school," Zendejas said of Aguayo's transition from college kicking to the NFL. "He was so perfect in college, and then he goes [to the NFL] and he has a little bit of a problem."
The two former Groza award winners are different, with Gonzalez more adept at making field goals from a longer distance. He made 13 of 15 kicks of 40-plus yards in his final season at ASU, including seven of nine from more than 50 yards. Against Colorado last season he kicked a 59-yard field goal.
The transition to the professional game isn't easy, though, and Gonzalez is not taking lightly the work required to apply his skills to the NFL.
"Everybody out there is the top level," said Gonzalez of his time with the Browns. "There's definitely not as much playfulness. You're a professional. You have to act like it."
To really embark on his NFL career, Gonzalez has to beat out last season's kicker, Cody Parkey, for the starting job. One encouraging element for the young rookie is the welcome Gonzalez has received from Browns fans.
"The fan base is incredible," marveled Gonzalez. "The whole city, they love their teams. They're diehard."
Where can I get my Browns Zane Gonzalez jersey?
— Bring Brownie back (@Cleveland_elf) June 30, 2017
There's one drawback to Cleveland Gonzalez has found so far -- a food issue he didn't have to deal with during his years in Texas and Arizona.
"There's really not much Mexican food," Gonzalez said of the city. "That's my favorite style of food. But I can deal with that."