{"id":460247,"date":"2026-10-08T16:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T16:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/460247\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T16:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T16:04:08","slug":"cougar-qa-humble-houston-kicker-jonathan-dimas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/460247\/","title":{"rendered":"Cougar Q&#038;A: Humble Houston Kicker Jonathan Dimas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Houston Football kicker <a href=\"https:\/\/uhcougars.com\/sports\/football\/roster\/jonathan-dimas\/9858\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"9858\" target=\"_blank\">Jonathan Dimas<\/a> has started the season a perfect 6 for 6 on field goals and was named Big 12 Conference Special Teams Player of the Week following a career performance. Get to know Dimas following Houston&#8217;s 27-17 win over UCF.\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nQ: What are three things you want people to know about you? <br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/uhcougars.com\/sports\/football\/roster\/jonathan-dimas\/9858\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"9858\" target=\"_blank\">Jonathan Dimas<\/a>: I&#8217;m a very fun guy, very calm, and very respectful.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nQ: How do those correlate to your strengths at football? <br \/>\nJD: It always keeps my mind cool. As a kicker you need to be cool, always. You can&#8217;t really get hot and kick the ball at the same time, you always have to be cool and composed. I feel like that makes me more relaxed, makes me feel confident in myself and in every kick that I have.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nQ: What do you do to get your mind right and get yourself in the right headspace when time is running down? <br \/>\nJD: I get my mind right even before the kick. Coach [Willie] Fritz always says, &#8220;you have to be mentally all in before the game&#8221;. So, every that the offense is past the 50, I&#8217;m always ready to kick a field goal, I don&#8217;t wait until the last minute. I&#8217;m always locked into the game no matter what the situation is, no matter where the ball is at. If it&#8217;s inside the 50, in my mind, it&#8217;s always a field goal opportunity. So, I&#8217;m always mentally ready for that.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nQ: What do you tell yourself and what is the process to get your mind right? <br \/>\nJD: I always tell myself that I&#8217;m the best on the field, that I&#8217;m going to do great, because as a kicker, you need to be confident in every kick that you do. As a kicker, you can go in and not feel confident, and that is when you start overthinking and doing stuff that you aren&#8217;t trained for. Whenever I go in, I remember all the stuff that we did throughout the week, all the stuff that I did beforehand, and I feel like that gets me mentally prepared to go into any field goal I need to do and make it.&#8221;<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nQ: What helped you be successful this past week, and what can you continue to do to help the team? <br \/>\nJD: First, all glory to God for giving me the strength and a lot of credit to my holder, my snapper, and the line for protecting me. I&#8217;m only as good as they are. We work with our snappers and holders every day, so I feel confident in them to do their job. They make my job easier, so I can just go up there and bang the kick in. It&#8217;s also building trust with my snapper and holder, which is something that I&#8217;ve been building up since spring ball, and they are doing an amazing job, and they make my job 10 times easier.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nQ: What goals do you have for your field goal kicking for the season? <br \/>\nJD: For the season, I want to be 95% and better and be at least a Lou Groza semifinalist. That&#8217;s one of the goals that I have for myself, but the team goal to make it to the Big 12 Championship, win it, and going as far as we can in the playoffs, that&#8217;s the main goal.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nQ: What&#8217;s one thing that someone who hasn&#8217;t kicked wouldn&#8217;t know about your position? <br \/>\nJD: I feel like they do know something about it since football is slowly growing in Central America, last time I went I told them about American football and they knew a little bit about it, but as too much, but they did know what a kicker was since every kicker plays soccer or has a soccer background, which is the same story with me. I played soccer growing up even when I was going into football. So, they know a lot about American football, just not all the rules and stuff, but they definitely know what a kicker is now.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nQ: When did you get introduced and wanted to pursue American football in college and potentially beyond? <br \/>\nJD: What got me into football was my big brother. My big brother was a high school kicker, and with me being the little brother, I&#8217;ve always wanted to do what my brother wanted to do. He introduced me to football when I was seven years old, when he was also a kicker. So, we went to a park one time and we saw a football team practicing there, then me, my dad, and my brother went and asked them, &#8220;Hey, do y&#8217;all need a kicker?&#8221; and they said, &#8220;Sure, why not.&#8221; So, that&#8217;s when I really started getting into kicking, but obviously I was already doing soccer and football during that time at a young age. I would have a soccer game the same day as a football game. So, I would have a game at 10am for soccer, and then I would have a 2 p.m. game for football. I give a ton of credit to my dad and my brother for getting me into football.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nQ: How has your upbringing shaped who you are? <br \/>\nJD: Obviously, me being first-generation here out of my whole family, it&#8217;s a really big blessing to be one of the first generations of my family to even go to college. I really take a lot of pride in that because there&#8217;s not that many Hispanics playing college football, so I really take a lot of pride in that and I really want to play for other Hispanic people and show them that it&#8217;s possible, that you can go into a sport that isn&#8217;t really a thing in their country, that you can come and do it as good or even better than the kickers here.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nQ: Where are your parents from? <br \/>\nJD: There from a little town called Molineros. It&#8217;s a really small town in El Salvador, I went there this past spring, and going there and seeing where they came from and where lived was a very humbling experience.\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nQ: What was it like growing up in the United States with other family immigrating from El Salvador? <br \/>\nJD: It&#8217;s a humbling experience. My parents came to a new country not knowing the language, not knowing how the United States works. So, seeing them do that, it pushes me knowing that they came here to do what&#8217;s best for me and my brother. So, I can&#8217;t give up because I do it for them and because they came here to give me a better life, so I got to take advantage of that.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nSUPPORT YOUR COOGS<br \/>\nFans can make a direct impact on the success of Houston Football by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/app.uhcougars.com\/UH25PartnerWSA\" title=\"https:\/\/app.uhcougars.com\/UH25PartnerWSA\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">providing NIL opportunities<\/a>\u00a0and by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/uhcougarpride.com\/membership-center\/giving-opportunities\/sport-specific-clubs\/huddle-46ers\/\" title=\"https:\/\/uhcougarpride.com\/sport-specific\/football.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">joining The Huddle<\/a>\u00a0which\u00a0provides financial support directly to Houston Football for needs beyond its operating budget.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nSTAY CONNECTED<br \/>\nFans can receive updates by following\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/uhcougarfb\" title=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/uhcougarfb\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">@UHCougarFB<\/a>\u00a0on X, formerly known as Twitter, and catch up with the latest news and notes on the team by clicking\u00a0LIKE\u00a0on the team&#8217;s Facebook page at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/HoustonCougarFootball\/\" title=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/HoustonCougarFootball\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Houston Cougar Football<\/a>. Fans can also follow the team on Instagram at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/uhcougarfb\/\" title=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/uhcougarfb\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">uhcougarfb<\/a>.<br \/>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2013\u2013 UHCougars.com \u2013\u2013<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Football kicker Jonathan Dimas has started the season a perfect 6 for 6 on field goals and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-460247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}