The Chinese athletes Gao Wei, Ding Long and Shen Yalei are being Americanized. For the past five weeks they have lived here in western Oregon. They have combed the malls, learned to love diner food, studied English and adopted the Westernized names William, Rambo and Sean — all in an effort to become the first Chinese to play in the United States’ most popular sports league, the NFL. The plan was devised by the N.F.L. to penetrate China, that fertile untapped market, by giving Chinese sports fans someone in a helmet and shoulder pads they can readily connect with. Gao, Ding and Shen knew next to nothing about football when they were selected by the N.F.L. at a tryout last summer in China. Now they are immersed in the experiment, a crash course on the craft of kicking footballs that may culminate in August with one or two them taking the field in the N.F.L.’s first exhibition game in China.
Gao, 21, was a soccer goalie at the Shanghai Institute of Physical Education; Ding, 19, played rugby for the Qing Daw Ming Sha club; and Shen, 22, was a soccer player with Beijing Sports University. They are kicking and training at the University of Oregon’s indoor practice facility, under the tutelage of Nicholas Setta, a 25-year-old kicker in the Canadian Football League who played at Notre Dame.
On March 5, they will participate in a tryout camp for N.F.L. Europe in Tampa, Fla., after which two of them will be assigned to teams for the 10-week European season as final preparation for a shot at suiting up for the N.F.L. exhibition game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots in the 66,000-seat the Workers Stadium in Beijing on Aug. 9.
“It’s amazing,” Gao said through an interpreter. “At the beginning, it was hard to believe. But we’re just starting to get used to it.” The N.F.L. is hoping Gao, Ding or Shen can provide the kind of international appeal that the N.B.A. and Major League Baseball have achieved with players like the Houston Rockets’ Yao Ming (China) and the Yankees’ Hideki Matsui (Japan). “I think it will take another generation for football to find someone like that in China,” Ding said, referring to Yao, the Rockets’ All-Star center. Shen said, “We have the potential to do it, even though we’re just beginning to train.”
N.F.L. officials have insisted that using a Chinese kicker in the exhibition game in Beijing would not be a stunt, but rather a football decision made by coaches of the Patriots and the Seahawks, who have each agreed to suit up one player — not necessarily to use him. Last week, Mark Waller, senior vice president of N.F.L. International, wanted to know one thing from a visitor to the kickers in Oregon, “Can they kick?” Yes, they can. But their range is inconsistent. Setta said that on a good day, each could hit from 47 or 48 yards out. “They’ve made tremendous improvements,” Setta said. “But dealing with the pressure that comes with this job isn’t easy to teach. Nobody really understands it until you’re in it and it’s happening.”
The United States Basketball Academy, a Eugene-based consultant to the Chinese sports ministry, is host to Gao, Ding and Shen. Early one morning last week, Setta put them through a typical kicking evaluation, charting makes and misses as they moved from the point-after mark out to the 35-yard line (a 45-yard field goal). Gao and Dong missed sparingly as they moved back and forth across the field from hash mark to hash mark. Shen, who said he had had a sleepless night, sprayed balls all around the uprights. Gao was the most consistent, with a smooth setup and good loft. He had learned to take a deep breath and let his hands swing loose before approaching the ball. From 40 yards, his kick barely made it over the crossbar. The others’ kicks fell short. Five yards farther back, all three of them pulled the ball to the left. “You’re pulling it because you’re trying to squeeze too much distance out of it,” Setta told them. They worked their way back down to the point-after position. “If anyone misses this, we’ll do 20 100-yard dashes,” Setta said, before adding, “And we’ll do them if you just tap it over the bar.” Gao and Dong boomed their kicks down the middle. Shen struck his firmly but it pushed right, just outside the upright. “Twenty 100s,” Setta said.
Later, Setta said: “They’re being thrown into one of the most pressure-filled jobs in the world. I want them to see what kind of focus they need.” Setta said each kicker had added about 10 yards to his range since arriving in Oregon. They had hit a 35-yard field goal in China to qualify for the program. Setta was confident they could consistently make a 30-yarder, the benchmark the N.F.L. asked Setta to shoot for in Oregon.
The snap, hold and rush involved in a real field-goal attempt will add several degrees of difficulty, of course. In November, the players got a taste of these live components at an NFL Europe minicamp in Cologne, Germany, and N.F.L. officials hope a season in Europe this spring will more fully prepare them. But Waller said that the stakes were high enough that the plan to put players on the field could be abandoned if they were not ready by August. “That’s critical for us and the teams, but also for the players,” Waller said. “This is live action, with potentially serious consequences.” He also said the N.F.L. did not want to embarrass the players in front of their home fans.
Until now, the three kickers said, football has had little resonance in China. N.F.L. games are generally broadcast on Mondays, when few people have four hours to spare. Ding said that even with his background in rugby, he had a difficult time understanding the game at first. Gao’s and Ding’s parents were startled by the sport’s violence when they first saw it on TV. But Ding said his father grew to like it and now stays up to late to watch highlights and reruns. “He understands it’s a man’s game,” Ding said.
The first time these kickers watched an N.F.L. game in its entirety was the Super Bowl last month. They saw the rare miss from the Indianapolis Colts’ veteran kicker Adam Vinatieri on a chip shot from 36 yards just before halftime. They noted the extenuating circumstances — the pouring rain and bad ball position on the hold. And they watched how Vinatieri shook it off and followed with two successful field goals in the second half. “It shows he’s got the ability to handle the pressure,” Gao said. Spoken like a true student of the position.
I have a feeling that something may have been lost in translation.
