TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Football is a team sport, but when the kicker has his number called, the spotlight is all on him.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, you try to have the mindset that you\u2019re gonna try to do your best every time you\u2019re out there on that field, and you just keep going back to that mindset,” USF junior kicker Nico Gramatica said.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
\u00a0Nico and Gaston Gramatica are both kickers on the USF football team
\n
\u00a0Their dad, Martin, was a kicker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
\n
\u00a0Their younger sister, Emme, is in seventh grade and plays flag football and soccer
\n
\u00a0The Gramatica family is full of athletes making legacies in Tampa Bay in the past, present and future<\/p>\n
Gramatica thrives under pressure. Last season, he nailed 18 field goals for the Bulls.<\/p>\n
“When I go out there on that field I just start breathing and have one or two mental notes and it\u2019s just to stay through the ball and that\u2019s it. I don\u2019t try to overthink about anything,” Nico Gramatica said.<\/p>\n
That mindset runs in the family. Younger brother Gaston is following in Nico’s footsteps. He is an incoming freshman at USF, and he is also a kicker.<\/p>\n
“Having Nico here is such a help because there\u2019s a lot of questions I had when I came here, and having my best friend to be able to answer them, it just made the transition super smooth\u00a0and it\u2019s been awesome,” Gaston Gramatica said.<\/p>\n
Nico and Gaston were both heavily recruited out of high school, and Nico was the No. 1 kicker in his recruiting class, so they can handle the pressure of kicking in front of tens of thousands of fans.<\/p>\n
That is because they grew up training with their father,\u00a0Martin Gramatica, who kicked in front of millions of fans during his nine-year NFL career that included six seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m super proud of their hard work because\u00a0they didn\u2019t get there just on their last name,” Martin Gramatica said. “They got there because of their hard work, and for them to kick at Raymond James Stadium, where I played, it\u2019s incredible.”<\/p>\n
After Martin retired, he raised his family in Tampa. Nico and Gaston both played football and soccer at Cambridge Christian School, and his youngest child, Emme, is in seventh grade. She plays flag football and soccer, and Martin is her soccer coach.<\/p>\n
“I like soccer more because I\u2019ve always grown up playing soccer, and it\u2019s really big in my household because my dad played it when he was in Argentina. So I\u2019ve always loved soccer and always dreamed of playing at the higher levels,” Emme Gramatica said.<\/p>\n
It’s time Martin cherishes.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, to spend every second on the field with my daughter, I can\u2019t ask for anything more because at the end of the day, we all look back and think we didn\u2019t spend enough time with our kids. The sports memories, being on the field coaching her, those are memories that we\u2019ll never forget,” Martin Gramatica said.<\/p>\n
This is a family of athletes. Their mom played tennis at USF, and their uncle, Santiago, also kicked for the Bulls.<\/p>\n
Nico, Gaston and Emme know how lucky they are to learn from an NFL kicker.<\/p>\n
“I remember one drill he used to have us do is we would have to sprint 10 yards a couple times right before you kick, so you\u2019re breathing heavy, your heart is racing, and he\u2019s like, ‘You gotta breathe. This is what big-pressure kicks feel like, so just breathe’,” Gaston said.<\/p>\n
Added Nico, “He\u2019s been through it. He\u2019s kicked big kicks. He\u2019s also missed kicks as well, so he can be there for me when I make or miss kicks. So it\u2019s awesome that he\u2019s on my side.”<\/p>\n
The bloodlines of this kicking family will benefit the Bulls for years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Football is a team sport, but when the kicker has his number called, the spotlight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[10929,1238,274,4403,111,143,1236,70639,115,110,135,137,136,278,19211],"class_list":{"0":"post-233229","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-app-college-sports","9":"tag-app-sports","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-college","12":"tag-college-sports","13":"tag-college-football","14":"tag-florida-sports","15":"tag-michael-epps","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-tampa","19":"tag-tampa-headlines","20":"tag-tampa-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-usf-bulls"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}