After his Junior year in high school, he was a highly recruited place kicker, receiving interest from the football programs at Ole Miss, Southern Miss and Rice, but those offers were taken off the table when he was benched halfway through his senior campaign.
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| Gostkowski pitching for the Memphis Tigers in 2003 |
"I lost my job to one of my best friends, and all of my football scholarship offers were taken away." laments Gostkowski, "I let the pressure of recruiting get to me."
He was prepared to leave football behind - and, in fact, he did - accepting a baseball scholarship from the University of Memphis after posing an 8-2 record as a starting pitcher in his senior season at Madison Central High School in Madison, Mississippi, with a sterling 1.40 ERA, football the furthest thing from his mind.
"I wasn't going to play football at Memphis, but my parents talked me into trying out," he says. "I thought I would give football a try one year and if it didn't work out, I was just going to stick to baseball." - but just a couple of weeks into camp as a walk on, his performance was so impressive that he was offered a football scholarship.
Playing two sports in college can be a tricky proposition, but as a freshman, Gostkowski earned all Conference USA freshman honors in both, but going into his sophomore year at Memphis, it started to catch up with him on the diamond as missing fall baseball camp turned out to be far more debilitating to his pitching than missing spring football was to his kicking.
So when his ERA nearly doubled from the mound in his sophomore season, he found himself nose-diving down the rotation, he also felt himself in a quandary - not wanting to choose one sport over another - but when asked about the challenges of playing two sports that he loved in college, and which way he was leaning, Gostkowski was candid.
"If I wanted to go out and just do something one day, it would probably be baseball. There is so much more pressure kicking field goals." he said at the time, adding "you could make all your field goals all year then miss a game-winning one and that's all people will remember. In baseball, you have a lot more chances to prove yourself. You can get hit hard in one game, but the next game come back and pitch a no-hitter."
He ended up playing both sports throughout college, stating that he loved both equally and couldn't see himself giving up one for another, but as time progressed, his future in football materialized while his baseball career plateaued - something that being nominated for the Groza award in his junior season can attest.
The award for the best placekicker in the country was within his grasp going into the late season, having hit 15 of 17 field goals for the season to that point - but he flamed out, missing two relative chip shots in a game against Southern Miss and tumbled out of competition, to which some attributed to the pressure of being in competition for the award.
So when Gostkowski missed a 42 yarder on the final play of last season's home opener for the Patriots against the Arizona Cardinals, a game in which linebacker Brandon Spikes unbelievably gave New England a chance to win a game that seemed all but lost by forcing a fumble with just seconds remaining, the questions about the kicker's mental make up began to surface.
“That was the biggest kick I ever missed,” he said. “It was hard to deal with but it’s an experience that I tried to use to help myself going forward.”
That may be, but with two flame outs already on his football resume - once in high school and once at Memphis - detractors begin to question when these misses stop being learning experiences and start being a trend...
...a question that many more fans are asking this preseason, as Gostkowski has missed three of his five attempts in two preseason games thus far. But the strong-legged kicker who regularly sends his kickoffs out of the end zone for touchbacks has always bounced back, usually stronger than ever.
He feels strong, and feels as if he's striking the ball well - and all he can do is refocus and keep working, because he knows it's all him. He knows he's being consistent in practice and that his consistency will start to manifest itself in games, as it always has.
But just in case, does he change anything in how he prepares or what he does to get through these rough patches?
“I threw my shoe away. I had to try a new shoe,” he said of the miss against the Cardinals, adding he’s thrown out a shoe before. “I was mad at that shoe.” But he also understands that it's not the equipment or any superstition that helps a kicker out of a slump, it's mental toughness and hours of repetition.
"I was a collegiate baseball player as well. I've dealt with difficult situations and I've struggled before in every sport I've played. I've had success in every sport." the New England Patriots eighth year place kicker said, "If you go into a game think you're going to screw up, you're probably not going to be at a professional level."
“I know I’m not going to hit every kick, but I’m going to do my best to not let one kick affect the next kick"
He's also not going to let the negativity of the media nor the chatter from the fans affect his next kick either. As a young boy he was given the unfortunate nickname of "Beaver", having his two front teeth knocked out playing hockey, the replacement teeth bigger than his others as the orthodontist constructed them so that the rest of his body would catch up...
...so after having to endure that hurtful name as a child, don't think for a moment that anything anyone could say about him is going to have any sort of impact on his psyche. Gostkowski will just continue to practice, continue to do everything exactly the way that has made him the most accurate kicker in club history at 84.5% - yes even more accurate than the storied career marks of Adam Vinatieri.
But the big question will come when Gostkowski is faced with a kick for all the marbles, like Vinatieri did several times in his Patriots' career, nailing every one of them - because being the most accurate kicker in team history is decidedly different from being the most clutch kicker in team history.
Given the chatter this preseason, it's clear that Patriots' fans prefer the latter, and all Gostkowski can do is to keep practicing and plying his trade, hoping for the late season opportunity to be become both.
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