Before he became one of the heroes of the opening weekend of the college football season, Hawaii kicker Kansei Matsuzawa was scouring YouTube for videos that would help him learn how to kick.
Matsuzawa was at a low point in his life after high school when his father gave him a plane ticket to the United States. During his trip, the Chiba Prefecture native, who spoke no English, was introduced to football at an NFL game between the then-Oakland Raiders and Los Angeles Rams. The sport was still on his mind after he returned home. That was when he set a goal of reaching the NFL.
That set him off on the unique path that led to his heroics last Saturday, when he made a 38-yard field goal as time expired to give Hawaii a dramatic 23-20 win over Stanford in the team’s season opener. The Rainbow Warriors’ victory over the ACC’s Cardinal was their first over a power conference team since 2019.
Matsuzawa, a 26-year-old senior, celebrated the win in the moment, but like a true kicker, he had already moved on a few days later.
“At the moment, it was pretty good,” Matsuzawa told The Japan Times. “But after the weekend, nothing changed, to be honest. Because we just started the new season, and we started off strong and won against a powerful team.
“The situation was tough for the Stanford team. They have a new head coach, new GM and a lot of players transferred. But a win is a win, and so I think it’s a pretty good start for the team, and me as well.”
Hawaii faces another power conference opponent in Arizona from the Big 12 on Saturday.
Matsuzawa was perfect against the Cardinal. He was 3-for-3 on field goal attempts, including a 40-yarder in the third quarter and a game-tying 37-yard field goal in the fourth quarter. He also converted both his extra point attempts. Matsuzawa was later named the Mountain West Conference Special Teams Player of the Week.
Not bad for a player who only picked up the sport just over five years ago as a 20-year-old and took a unique path, to say the least, to playing major college football at Hawaii, which is coached by former star quarterback Timmy Chang.
“I used to play soccer in Japan until high school,” Matsuzawa said. “I was going to college to play soccer, but I failed the exam to get into college.”
The setback was hard on Matsuzawa, who attended Makuhari Sogo High School in Chiba Prefecture.
“I had nothing for two years, and I didn’t like my life,” he said. “I grew up playing soccer, but I was kind of forced to stop. Then my dad gave me plane tickets to the West Coast of America. I did the trip alone, for like two weeks, and I watched my first football game over there.”
Matsuzawa took an instant liking to the sport — from the play on the field to the atmosphere at the Oakland Coliseum.
“Then, I went home and took a few months, and football was still stuck in my head. I was like, ‘Oh, I think I want to be an NFL player.’”
There has yet to be a Japanese-born player in the NFL. Wide receiver Noriaki Kinoshita signed with the Atlanta Falcons in 2007 but was released at the end of training camp. Safety Haruki Nakamura, an American who was born to a Japanese father and played for the Baltimore Ravens and Carolina Panthers over five seasons, is among the few with Japanese heritage to play in the league.
“If I wanted to be an NFL player, I thought kicker was the only way,” Matsuzawa said. “Then, I decided to reset 20 years of my life.”
The first step was learning how to kick.
While there are a few football hotbeds in Japan, mainly in the Kansai and Kanto regions, it remains a niche sport in the baseball-mad nation. With no one to turn to, Matsuzawa took matters into his own hands.
“I was already 20, and I didn’t want to ask somebody, I didn’t want to follow the wrong guy,” he said. “I just decided, I believe in myself. That’s the reason I started by myself. Also, football is not huge, like in the U.S. So it’s not easy to find coaches. But there were a lot of videos on YouTube, a lot of videos on Instagram. So I just watched a lot of NFL kickers and tried to imitate those top-level players.”
Because the NFL was his goal, Matsuzawa bypassed the X League, Japan’s top league, to play college football in the U.S.
The Japanese hopeful also decided to make things harder on himself by enrolling at Hocking College, a community college in Nelsonville, Ohio, instead of a more comfortable landing spot in the U.S.
“Because of my first trip to the West Coast, I knew I was like a child in America, because I couldn’t speak English, and I didn’t know anything about football in the U.S.,” he said. “I felt I needed to be a man first.
“So, I put myself into the toughest situation I could have. That’s why I didn’t want to go to California or any place close to Japan or the West Coast. I put myself in the Midwest.”
Matsuzawa says he was the only Asian at the school and one of very few international students. He gradually conquered the language and cultural barriers thanks to friends and football. He also attracted the attention of the Hawaii coaches during his time at Hocking, where he was 12-for-17 on field goals, including a 50-yarder, as a sophomore.
He was recruited by one of Hawaii's special teams coaches and, after pondering his future for a few months, he made the move.
"So coach Sheffield and coach Chang are the biggest reasons I'm here, not culture," he said, referring to Thomas Sheffield, the special teams coordinator. "I like the culture a lot. It's a mixed culture, Japan and America, and I can have a lot of Japanese food. But the first thing is I really like the coaches here. That's why I committed to University of Hawaii."
While Matsuzawa did not play in his first season, he appeared in all 12 of the Rainbow Warriors’ games in 2024, making 12 of 16 field goals while going 32-for-32 on extra points.
Matsuzawa said this past season showed him he needed to have confidence and a strong mindset to compete at his new level. He was mentally exhausted after the 2024 campaign and worked with a sports psychologist at the school, which he said was a big help.
His mental fortitude was on full display in Hawaii’s first game of 2025. The team fell behind 10-0 early but worked its way back over the course of the contest. Matsuzawa said he had the ultimate belief in his teammates late in the game and that he was only worried about preparing himself for the moment he knew was coming.
“When we gave up the second touchdown, it was like 17-20,” he said. “Then, I was like, ‘This is going to be my game.’ I definitely felt like I was going to make a game-tying field goal, and then somehow we get the ball back, and I have a chance to make a game-winning field goal. That’s how I felt.”
Matsuzawa calls the NFL a goal he had when he was 20 and not something he thinks about right now, saying he is focused on the process, rather than the result.
“I feel like if I have a successful season, if I have a successful game every single game, that’s the result,” he said. “Like I said, process over results. So I’m not chasing the NFL. I’m doing what I can do, what I can control. I’m focusing on every single day to get 1% better. Do the right thing and do my routine correctly, that’s the only thing I can do. That’s going to lead to being successful.”
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