![]() Parkey, a 17-year-old soon-to-be senior who had already committed to Auburn, blew Aguayo and the rest of the onlookers away with an 80-yard kickoff. 1 kicker in the country," he remembers telling Roberto Sr. No more linebacker, no more tight end, no more footy.Īnd that's exactly when he began to make his mark nationally, starting at a local Kohl's Camp in West Palm Beach, where he remembers being awestruck by Jupiter product Cody Parkey, who at the time was the top-ranked high school kicker in the United States. ![]() He reluctantly played soccer that spring, but after suffering a bad bone bruise on his kicking knee in his very first high school soccer match-an injury that would put him out of commission for three months -a 15-year-old Aguayo wasn't taking any more chances. "I didn't play any other positions," said Aguayo, noting that Banks-among many others -saw something in him as a kicker. "He knew what I was capable of doing and he didn't want me to get hurt." But when he got to South Lake, he was asked to join the varsity team right away and drop everything but special teams. In Pop Warner, Aguayo continued to focus on kicking along with his "real positions," linebacker and tight end. It's also when Banks realized he had a potential star on his hands. That's when they started hopping the fence at South Lake High School. "We outgrew that net pretty quick," said Roberto. But it didn't take long before they were drilling field goals above that, too. Six-year-old Ricky would kick from 15 yards out, while Roberto took each of the 35 yards available to him before running out of yard space.īefore long, the boys were losing footballs so deep in the woods that their father raised a net. added pipes to an old soccer net, with the woods behind his home serving as a backdrop. "Ever since when we were young, Roberto had that urge to get better and perfect himself," Ricky added. "Dad, I'm going to need you to make a goal post outside," Ricky Aguayo remembers his brother telling Roberto Sr. "I thought, 'I play soccer, so I'll just hit it like a soccer ball.' And I was the only one who was consistently making them, so I was the kicker." "I didn't think anything of it," he recalled. A 9-year-old Roberto volunteered to go first. "I went to school for four years, got my degree, won a national championship with my team, won a Groza Award, so I felt like it was the right time to take my talents to the next level."Īt Aguayo's first Pop Warner Junior Pee Wee practice, the coach lined up every player on the team to have them attempt kicks. ![]() "I felt like I had accomplished everything that I needed to accomplish," Aguayo told Bleacher Report before the combine. The Florida State product won the Lou Groza Award, which goes to the top college football placekicker, in his redshirt freshman season, and he walks away from the Seminoles as the most accurate kicker in NCAA history. Leaving school early isn't something specialists do, but Aguayo has proved to be an especially special specialist. Highest drafted kickers in modern NFL history ![]()
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