University of Hawaiʻi — NCAA Division I Football Team Kicker: Kansei Matsuzawa｜ライトハウス・ハワイ特集記事

In December 2025, Kansei Matsuzawa, an American football player at the University of Hawaiʻi, became the first Japanese player to be selected for the All-America team. The following interview was conducted in 2023, when he first enrolled at the University of Hawaiʻi.

University of Hawaiʻi — NCAA Division I Football Team
Kicker: Kansei Matsuzawa

Kansei Matsuzawa began playing American football at age 20 with the goal of reaching the NFL. On his own, he gathered information, mapped out each step, saved money, trained independently, and moved to the United States to enroll in a community college. After earning recognition for his performance, he finally achieved a major milestone this year—joining the University of Hawaiʻi football team in NCAA Division I. We asked him to reflect on the five-year journey that brought him here.

— What first inspired you to start playing American football?

It started with a setback and a solo trip to the United States. I had played soccer all the way through high school and wanted to continue in college, but things didn’t work out with my plans to advance. After graduating, I lost my sense of purpose. I complained every day and began wondering what I was even living for.

At that time, my father handed me a round-trip plane ticket to the U.S. I had plenty of time, so I flew there alone. After landing in San Diego, it took me an hour just to get out of the airport. That’s how the trip began—with a strong sense of my own helplessness. My only experience abroad had been visiting Hawaiʻi with my family as a child, so the cityscape was completely different from what I remembered. The one thing I had decided beforehand was to watch an American football game in San Francisco. My father had played football, so I thought I’d check it out. What struck me was how simply entertaining it was—and how, in America, sports are entertainment and business to such an extent. At that point, I didn’t think, “I want to stand on that field.”

In Los Angeles, where I stayed before returning to Japan, I took the subway even though I’d been warned it was dangerous, and I had an experience where I genuinely felt my life might be taken. I was physically big, but I couldn’t speak English and couldn’t do anything. Those two weeks made me fully realize how powerless I was.

After returning to Japan, driven by frustration and curiosity about that world, I found myself thinking, “I want to go back to America.” Almost without thinking, I went out and bought an American football.

— How did you feel when you bought that football and decided to aim for the NFL?

When I held the football, what I thought was, “Given my background in soccer, the only thing I can do is be a kicker.” Before I knew it, I was looking forward. I asked myself, “How am I going to live from here on?” I questioned myself, planned out my future, and visualized it in detail.

That big goal was to become an NFL player. I was just turning 20 at the time. For some reason, I had confidence in myself. At the same time, I decided I would keep this goal to myself and not tell anyone until it took some kind of shape.

— What did you do to turn that goal into reality?

First, I persuaded my parents and set my initial step as enrolling in a community college to study English and play football. To save money, I worked part-time five days a week from morning until night. Using YouTube and other resources as references, I practiced kicking endlessly in parks. I believed that before asking anyone for advice, I needed to try things myself 100 times, then 1,000 times, and deepen my understanding through my body. So every day, I just kept kicking and training at the gym. Because I was working toward my goal, kicking was fun.

Nine months later, I went to New York with four friends. While they did their own thing, I spent five hours on my own traveling to watch a University of Pennsylvania football game. I had only just learned about college football, but the sight of a stadium packed with 110,000 people was shocking. The players on the field were 20 years old—just like me. Respect and frustration mixed inside me. At that moment, college football became a clear step toward the NFL. I left the stadium after making a promise to the field itself: “I’ll come back as a player.”

— You enrolled in a community college in 2021. How did you manage the steps that led you to become a standout player?

First, I posted my kicking videos on X (Twitter), which has become the main platform for offers, and sent them to community colleges. As a result, I received opportunities to enroll at two schools. Wanting to grow stronger as a person, I deliberately chose Hocking College in Ohio—a place with little connection to Japan. Everything was new. The sense of morals and public safety was completely different from Japan, and both studying and daily life were challenging. But because my goal never wavered, I didn’t feel it was unbearable.

In my first season, I barely got any playing time, but I continued my independent training just as I always had. My real objective was kicking camps. Before enrolling, as I thought carefully about making my path to my goal more concrete, I reached out to one of the top high school players in the U.S. He replied and told me that players are evaluated at these kinds of camps.

About 200 players attend a camp, and at first, no one paid any attention to me. But as I warmed up and kept kicking, other players began to talk to me, and I gradually felt people becoming interested.

While playing in community college games and attending camps held all over the place, I focused even more on my studies so I could graduate as quickly as possible. I also put a lot of effort into building connections with football coaches. Then, in 2022, I was selected as one of the “Top 12” out of 40 invited players at the Chris Sailer Kicking “Top 12” camp, clearing one major goal.

On the other hand, camps and travel were expensive, and in June of that year, I completely ran out of the money I had saved. Up until then, I had been charging ahead alone with only my goal in sight, but not wanting to burden my parents—and with all the tension finally snapping—I was overwhelmed by fear and anxiety that I might no longer be able to attend classes or play football. In the end, my parents helped me, but the sudden weakening of the yen made it especially tough. After that, despite being told it was unprecedented, I earned my remaining credits all at once and graduated five months early. After graduating, I returned to Japan once in January 2023.

— And now you’ve joined the University of Hawaiʻi football team. How do you feel at this moment?

From the university’s perspective, there was no precedent of a Japanese player who had started playing football at a community college, so they seemed a bit unsure at first. However, while I was back in Japan, I received multiple offers from NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) Division I teams. Among them, the University of Hawaiʻi stood out—they called me every day. I was honest with them, telling them that my goal is the NFL and that I wanted to play for a program that could lead me there. They told me that Hawaiʻi was the right kind of university for that path. I wanted to be in an environment where I would be pushed and challenged, so I enrolled at the University of Hawaiʻi this summer.

What I feel now is that the team itself still needs to become stronger. There is another highly capable kicker besides me, so I want to sharpen my skills through healthy competition and push each other to improve.

From the day I bought my first football at age 20, I’ve made it all the way to college football. But over the next three years, I know I’ll need to work harder than ever—this is where the real challenge begins. I’ll keep valuing each day and moving steadily toward my goal. I hope people know that there is a Japanese player here in Hawaiʻi taking on the challenge of competing in a major sport at the highest level. Please support me!