Florida State, who initially offered Hepi a scholarship in June, are one of the most prestigious programmes in the sport, having won three national championships and producing over 300 NFL players.
Hepi will play as an offensive tackle, the same position as his idol Mailata and wear the same No 68.
Other schools to offer Hepi a scholarship include South Florida, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Sacramento State.
Some Australians are already trying to claim him as one of their own, but Hepi is a self-proclaimed proud Northlander, having spent his formative years in Northland towns Kāeo and Kaitāia before his family moved to Perth and later Queensland.
Hepi had been looking at a future working in the trades, something he wasn’t fond of, so when the chance to join the NFL Academy came up, he took it with both hands.
“I never followed the sport growing up,” Hepi told the Herald.
“I didn’t even know what college football was. I didn’t know there was that level to it. I’d heard of the NFL, but I was never fond of it at all.
“I think it was the opportunity of what my future could hold instead of getting stuck in the cycle and being a worker in the trades and doing that for the rest of my life.
“I didn’t really want that. I wanted something different and I saw this academy would give me a good crack at that.”
Nikau Hepi: “I never followed the sport growing up.” Photo / Supplied
Perfect mentor
Reaching the NFL is a long shot.
Only 1.6% of college football players make it to the professional level. In the 2023 NFL Draft, 259 players were selected from about 17,150 draft-eligible college athletes.
Each of the NFL’s 32 teams have 53 players on their active roster, totalling 1696 players.
There have been numerous players with New Zealand links in the NFL – such as current Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Michael Wilson, who has a Kiwi mother – but only five who were born in Aotearoa, the most notable being David Dixon and three-time Super Bowl champion Riki Ellison.
While making the NFL will be tough, Hepi has the perfect mentor by his side helping him chase his dream in Will Bryce, who runs the academy.
Bryce has a keen eye for talent. He discovered tape of Mailata while sitting in the carpark of a London football field in 2017, and invited him to the NFL’s International Player Pathway programme in Florida.
That success led to an academy being established in London to cater for European talent, and now the Asia-Pacific programme, which Bryce views as crucial given the Polynesian influence in the sport, with about 200 NFL players having family roots in the Pacific.
Bryce, who has worked with the NFL for 11 years, recalls encountering Hepi for the first time when he rocked up in a singlet and rugby league shorts to try some drills. It was immediately evident, he said, that Hepi was “genetically born to play this sport”.
Will Bryce runs the NFL Asia-Pacific Academy. Photo / Supplied
“For someone who didn’t know what they were getting into, to open Pandora’s box and get thrown right into the deep end, it’s pretty crazy how he’s managed it all,” Bryce told the Herald.
“We started asking him to do these weird movements he’d never done in his life. He had no idea what we were evaluating.
“What we’re looking for is those outliers. There’s a long way to go for him, but he’s light years ahead of where he was a year ago, both as a person and as a football player.”
There are no guarantees the academy will produce NFL players, but it has opened doors for athletes from the region, giving them a more realistic pathway towards elite American football.
Based at A.B. Paterson College on Australia’s Gold Coast, the elite development programme offers students the opportunity to combine fulltime education alongside intensive training in American football – under the guidance of qualified coaches.
There are several others in the programme with New Zealand links trying to follow in Hepi’s footsteps, including Hamza El-Ghobashy, who is of Kiwi and Egyptian heritage and was playing basketball when Bryce scouted him.
Because Hepi has finished high school, his schedule differs from the others at the academy.
He trains every morning from 6.30am for about 90 minutes before doing work to prepare for his move to Florida State. That is followed by a gym session and more on-field training in the afternoon.
Nikau Hepi is a self-proclaimed proud Northlander. Photo / Supplied
The other athletes attend school from 8.30am to 3.30pm, and some are only beginning high school.
Role model
Hepi doesn’t see himself as a trailblazer – his goal is simply to make his whānau proud.
“I feel like it gave myself and these other boys here the exposure they needed to create more opportunities for them to get more D1 scholarships,” Hepi said.
“Trailblazing or not, I think it was a good start and it provides good exposure for this programme.
“I just want to represent my country in the best way possible and this academy, to show where I’ve come from and that anybody can do it.”
Regardless of what he thinks, Bryce believes Hepi is a role model for others in the programme.
“There’s a lot to manage as a young person and he’s growing as a person,” Bryce said. ”The boys look up to him as well because he’s the oldest one.
Philadelphia Eagles superstar Jordan Mailata. Photo / Getty Images
Hepi is now putting plans in place before his move to Tallahassee, where he will hope to follow in the footsteps of Mailata.
The pair got the chance to meet in April when the Eagles superstar visited the academy and Hepi described it as one of the most enjoyable parts of his journey so far.
“It was great to have him around,” Hepi said. ”He’s like that big brother that everybody dreams of.
“The way he coaches you up and shows you what you’re doing wrong, he taught me a few things while he was here and I’m grateful to have him as a mentor.”
As the sport grows in New Zealand and Australia, Bryce hopes Hepi’s journey will spark something in kids who might never have considered American football as an option.
“After 11 years of doing this, I know there are outliers, kids like Nikau, whose parents might read this and think, “My son fits that profile’,” Bryce said.
“Some kids grow out of league, union or basketball as the game speeds up, but their bodies are built for football.
“And it’s never been easier to get involved in the game. You’ve never had a programme like this that’s trying to help those kinds of kids.”
Ben Francis is an Auckland-based reporter for the NZ Herald who covers breaking sports news.