Juan Velarde: the Peruvian who played soccer in Moyobamba and today dreams of reaching the billionaire NFL

The football he plays did not end up with the ball he dreamed of in his native Moyobamba, but he continues to hit the ball with that powerful right hand. Juan Velarde is that case of a Peruvian who breaks the molds to grow, to place the red and white colors in places where few imagine that a national can reach.

Juan came to the United States with the dream of being a professional soccer player. He had played in his native Moyobamba, he passed tests with satisfaction in Alianza Lima and Inti Gas, but his destiny was to hit the ball. He is now a kicker for the football team at the University of North Carolina.

And it has done it successfully. Last season, the NCCU Eagles won the NCCA Division I title, the most important championship at the university level, and with this he feels that he is taking good steps to become a player in the NFL, the monstrous tournament that the United States has in this discipline that ends with the Super Bowl.

“88% of NFL players have taken them from Division I colleges. Four years of play are required to be eligible. If you play well three years you already have the opportunity to go, but in the case of kickers we played four years”, Juan tells us.

The kickers are the players who have little action in the matches, but their kick is decisive to resolve the matches. They are the ones who do the punting when their attack has not been able to complete the ten yards in three attempts. In the fourth, they seek to move the ball away as much as possible and Juan is in charge of such a responsibility. “Since they throw the ball at me, I only have two seconds to kick and there are nine people who come with everything to block me, to hurt me,” he tells us and for this reason he trains an hour more every afternoon than his teammates.

Juan has even had to stop playing soccer, his great passion, since he has to keep his leg ‘accustomed’ to hitting the ball. “In football we tend to kick and cross the leg, in football the leg has to go straight up and up,” he tells us.

for the nfl

And his dream is clearly to reach the NFL, but he knows that the road is not that easy, especially for his position. “We are talking about 100 players in my position for 32 teams. But I feel like I’m on the right track, consistent in my kicks and I’m very cold when it comes to difficult moments”. He needs a lot of mental strength and to be prepared for every eventuality, because there are even games in which he barely kicks one or two, but others in which he has more than ten.

The decision to be an American football player had more to do with strategy than taste for Juan. He even went so far as to play his first season without wanting to know the rules. The Peruvian arrived in the United States determined to play football, but while already in High School he found that American football offered him the scholarships he needed to continue studying without the high costs that American education requires.

“At football I saw my ticket to college for free. I played soccer and I said to myself: “I know how to kick”, so I started playing in my junior year of High School”, he tells us. “I was 16 years old and I wasn’t the fastest, nor the tallest, nor the strongest. I told myself that if I’m going to do it, I have to do it well and maybe in another sport I wouldn’t have made it to Division I”.

And then it was all decisions in search of opportunities. He became a kicker due to the natural condition of having a strong leg and because he was physically unable to compete in other positions. “For another position you have to have been born. The kicks I have had to learn in three years what others have been doing more than 10 ″, he comments, but he has known how to learn and well because he always had his goals clear and placed them ahead of the talent. The discipline made him become one of the best.

And without knowing the sport well, he got into it. “The first year I was chosen in the team of the region and without knowing the rules. At the age of two I reached Division I and I can say that I am the only Peruvian to win that tournament, ”he says.

A Peruvian playing American football, a story that only Juan was capable of writing. In a few months maybe we can see it on ESPN. His mentality is aimed at that.

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