{"id":223121,"date":"2025-10-03T15:21:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T01:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=223121"},"modified":"2025-10-03T15:28:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T01:28:59","slug":"matsuzawa-all-america-groza-resume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2025\/10\/03\/matsuzawa-all-america-groza-resume\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Tokyo Toe’ Matsuzawa building All-America r\u00e9sum\u00e9, chasing Groza Award"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> < 1<\/span> minute<\/span><\/span>

\"graphic<\/p>\n

University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at Mānoa football<\/a> placekicker Kansei Matsuzawa is turning heads across college football, and his remarkable rise from a self-taught kicker in Japan to the nation\u2019s top scorer is fueling All-America and Lou Groza Award (college football\u2019s annual award for the nation\u2019s top placekicker) buzz.<\/p>\n

Through the first half of the 2025 season, the senior has been perfect on 16 field goal attempts, setting a UH<\/abbr> and Mountain West record for consecutive makes to start a season. Dating back to last year, his streak has reached 17, the second-longest in school history. He leads the nation in made field goals, points scored (62) and conversions from 40-plus yards (seven). His six straight games with multiple field goals without a miss also marks a Mountain West record.<\/p>\n

Nicknamed the “Tokyo Toe,” Matsuzawa\u2019s story has become one of the most compelling in college football. A native of Ichikawa, Japan, he grew up playing soccer and didn\u2019t attempt his first kick until age 20 after attending an NFL<\/abbr> game in Los Angeles. He taught himself how to kick by studying YouTube videos and eventually earned a spot at Hocking College in Ohio. After two seasons there, he joined the Rainbow Warriors as a walk-on in 2023.<\/p>\n

Matsuzawa\u2019s poise has already produced signature moments, including a game-winning field goal as time expired in the week 0 win over Stanford and a career-long 52-yarder against Fresno State. He has been named Mountain West Special Teams Player of the Week three times this season and honored twice as a Lou Groza Award “Star of the Week.”<\/p>\n

National media have also embraced his journey, with features in NBC<\/abbr> Nightly News<\/em>, The Athletic<\/em>, Japan Times<\/em> and Sporting News<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Read the full feature from UH<\/abbr> Mānoa Athletics<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A native of Japan, he grew up playing soccer and didn\u2019t attempt his first kick until age 20 after attending an NFL<\/abbr> game in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":223122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1362],"tags":[58,83,660,714,9,550],"class_list":["post-223121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","tag-athletics","tag-football","tag-student-recognition","tag-student-athlete","tag-uh-manoa","tag-manoa-athletics","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/manoa-athletics-kansei-matsuzawa-tokyo-toe.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223121"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223143,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223121\/revisions\/223143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}