Jordan HammImagine going overseas, experiencing the culture and attending a sporting event that’s a favorite specific to the locals. Things would look foreign and a bit confusing. The nuances of the game would take a while to notice, and it could look like an organized chaos at times. Throw in a language barrier, and it would be easy to get lost in spectating.
Now imagine going overseas to play in a sporting event you’ve never played, let alone seen.
That’s what the last month has been like for Cactus kicker Andrea Bighiani. He’s an Italian foreign exchange student who has been in the states a little over a month. He had never played American football, and knew next to nothing about the sport when he first came to Arizona from Lombardy, a region in Northern Italy.
That didn’t stop the former soccer player from joining the Cactus football team as a kicker at the encouragement of his host parent, Mikel Plasencio.
“Actually, he told he wanted to join the football team,” Plasencio said. “I didn’t have to ask him. That’s usually the thing they want to do is play American football.”
Plasencio is housing two foreign exchange students this year, his third year in EF Exchange Year. Bighiani took up football and the other student is on the swim team. The two chose Cactus sight unseen when they learned Plasencio was an alumnus of the high school.
Last year, he was host parent to Jasper Wrage, who was a kicker for Centennial and returned to Germany with a state championship ring.
“Bringing these kids over here to experience this dream, is pretty cool,” a choked up Plasencio said. “It’s an experience I can’t put into words.”
So what was the strangest thing about American football to Bighiani?
“Everything,” the kicker said.
He was a blank slate for first-year head coach Joseph Ortiz who recruited his father, Joseph Ortiz, Sr.,a former kicker at St. Mary’s and Phoenix College, to help out his converted soccer player, who was a “sponge.”
“We started with, ‘The ball is going to be on the tee, you’re going to take two steps back’…it was that basic,” Ortiz, Sr. said. “By the time we were done, he was hitting (45-yard field goals), so he picked it up really, really quickly.”
So he had the kicking part down, but how do you teach the game to someone who would play in his first game roughly three weeks after stepping foot on the gridiron for the first time?
Well, in some cases, on the fly and with some creativity.
Bighiani, who took five years of English in Italy, isn’t too sure what an onside kick is, but tell him “surprise kick” and he will get his bright orange cleats to connect with the ball, making it skip and sputter roughly ten yards downfield so his team can recover it. A pooch kick? Coach tells him to “kick it to the 45”. And any athlete who grew up around soccer would never call their competitive contests “games,” but according to Bighiani, the Cobras are 2-0 in their matches this year.
Coach Ortiz said his new kicker hates wearing a helmet and often forgets his mouthpiece, but he has already made an impact on the team in their first two wins.
In their season opener at Catalina Foothills, Bighiani was called upon to pull off a “kick to the 45″. He did so, flopping the ball in the air and having it die between the first and second row of the return team. His Cactus teammates came crashing in and recovered the ball, swaying the momentum in Cactus’ favor.
“He really didn’t know what was going on, but for the kids to all rally around him on the sideline, he was ear-to-ear on his smile,” Ortiz said. “I think that’s when he knew he made the right decision to come out for football.”
The following “match,”, Bighiani converted all five of his extra point attempts in a win over Ironwood.
Bighiani may be new to football, but he is thrilled he can contribute to the Cobras’ winning ways.
“I’m Italian, and when Italians play sports, it’s like they’re going to war,” Bighiani said. “So I want to win, and I want to help my team and the coach.”
His coach is confident in him as long as his soccer instincts don’t kick in.
“He’s going to be good as long as we tell him to kick it over the bar, not under,” Ortiz joked.
And Bighiani will continue to learn the game as he contributes to the special teams unit and stays focused on one goal.
“I want to win a championship,” Bighiani said, quickly whipping his head over to Coach Ortiz and asking, “We have a championship, right?”
