| | JONESBORO, Ark. -- Nick Gatto grabbed a pair of gloves, fit
one over the nub that is his right arm and began waving to his
Arkansas State University teammates.
"Hi everybody," he said. "What's up?"
That glimpse is a perfect illustration of a young man who has a
splendid attitude about being a football player with one arm.
"I have had things written just because of my arm," he said.
"Personally, I love that because that's like showing people, he is
doing something even though he has that ... I also want people to
see that I'm also good at my kicking."
He said he made 10-of-12 field goal attempts last year at Blinn
(Tex.) Junior College and that the misses were 45 and 50 yards.
Oregon State recruited him hard, but decided to go instead with
a high school kicker from the area, he said. Houston also was very
interested, but gave the scholarship to a freshman walk-on.
Blinn coach Everett Todd worked his heart out, Gatto said, to
keep a promise. "We are going to send you somewhere that is a
Division I school," Todd told Gatto.
In December, at 6 a.m., Gatto's phone rang.
"Nick, 'Coach (Mike) Tomlin here from ASU," Gatto said. His
response was a groggy, "Hello."
Gatto enrolled at ASU for the spring semester.
"Prior to me getting here, coach had told everybody that they
had signed a kicker for the team," Gatto said. "But he hadn't
told them I had only one arm. And, so, on my first day here, doing
weights, at first, even coach Nick (Nichols) thought I couldn't do
a bench press or anything and everybody was like, 'I don't know."'
In March, he bench-pressed 305 pounds.
The 6-0, 186-pound Gatto learned the technique in the seventh
grade, when he struggled to press just the bar. He balances one end
of the bar on his short arm, grips with his left hand and pushes.
"People always ask me if I have a problem or if I am,
uncomfortable with my arm," he said. "As a kid, yes, because I
got picked on a lot. I would have days when I would come home to my
mom and I would be crying, 'Why, why, why?"'
"And I said to myself, `Nick, you can either make something
good out of it or you can let it just take over your life. So I
said, 'Hey, from now on I'm going to keep a positive attitude about
it."'
He was not yet a teen-ager at the time.
"It was hard at first," he said. "Finally, I just said, 'Hey,
let's make something good out of this because to me all those
people poking fun at me, calling me names and everything, really
made me who I am now. Because I've taken that and I've always kept
that as, 'Nick, show them you are better than anybody else."'
In high school, he ran sprints, competed in the long jump and
triple jump. In football, he played strong safety, some receiver,
and even a little fullback.
As a receiver, he trapped passes against his pads. "On the
tackling, it's just go for their knees and hit 'em right," he
said. "That's how I've always done it."
He runs 4.5 in the 40 and is proud that no one has returned one
of his kickoffs for a touchdown when he was the last man.
Gatto said he is comfortable on field goal attempts up to 45
yards and can get there from 55 yards.
He smiles often and is quick to joke about his arm. Like the day
"Jaws" was on TV and he told some teammates: "Well, one day, I
was in the ocean, up came Jaws and there it went."
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