The Miraculous Journey of Matt Ganyard, U.Va.’s 34-Year-Old Kicker

Matt Ganyard strikes another football into a vast blue sky and I’m not thinking about catching this one. Number 98? Gotta canon. The ball zings into the net and bounces fat and sweet under the goalpost and I snag and wing it to the Cavalier staffer at the 25, who flips it to Ganyard, who in turn moves back ten yards more. Wearing a blue U.Va. hoodie, his blonde hair cropped short, he hops in place like the midfielder he once was, then checks in with Will Bettridge, the starting place kicker for Virginia, who stands on the other hash. Ganyard is the kickoff guy. Bettridge is the place kicker. But if the team needs a long field goal, or if Bettridge suffers an injury, Ganyard’s up.

It’s game day in Charlottesville’s Scott Stadium, and right now he needs data. How long could he go, if needed? Fifty-two yards, maybe 53? Ganyard checks the flags on the goal post as Bettridge hits one from 40 yards. Crisp. Ganyard nods, takes choppy steps back and over, squeezes his left hand into a ball and releases it, a move his father gave him for relieving pressure in high-stress situations. It’s the kind of bright autumn day in Charlottesville when it’s easy to believe that some dreams never die. As he approaches the ball, it’s easy to believe in the kicking dream of Matt Ganyard, who is also approaching middle age. At 34, he’s a decade and a half older than Bettridge—and college football’s oldest player.

“You’re going for a thud,” Ganyard later tells me. “A nice sound. You want that sweet spot, the big bone on the top of your foot. And it’s one of those things that when you feel it, you don’t even have to look up. You just know. You know where it’s going.”

The sound is thud and the sound is nice and that ball is going to be good from 55 yards. Ganyard really nailed it. Seconds later, Bettridge sends one in from 45 yards—another crisp shot through the heart of the goalposts.

Georgia Tech is the opponent on this Parents Weekend, and in section 120 Row O, Ganyard’s wife, Marie (U.Va. ’11), has found her seat with their daughter, Savannah (age 3), as Noah (age 1) naps at home with a sitter. Ganyard is set to graduate from U.Va.’s Darden School of Business this spring, a decade and a half after they met here as undergrads, back when Ganyard was a history major with a long leg and longer memory.

When he first tried out as a sophomore walk-on, in 2009, he was cut via email. He screenshotted the message, set it as the background to his iPad, and after graduating, spent ten years as an officer in the Marine Corps as a Cobra Attack Helicopter pilot. He watched YouTube kicking tutorials and started working out and kicking on bases and ships and ports. He kicked toward palm trees in Thailand and over soccer goals in Jordan and between light poles at empty soccer complexes.

When his deployment ended in 2018, Ganyard trained pilots at Camp Pendleton, outside San Diego, and kept kicking. He kicked and lifted for fast-twitch muscle. He kicked and listened to sports psychology books. He kicked at camps across the country against prep phenoms like Will Bettridge, a five-star recruit from Miami. Sometimes parents at these camps asked Marie which kicker was her son.

Ganyard’s unlikely journey is a part of the larger story of Virginia football. On November 13, 2022, while getting off the bus after a Sunday field trip, three players were shot and killed by a Virginia student who’d been on the 2018 football team. Devin Chandler. Lavel Davis Jr. D’Sean Perry. Running back Mike Hollins, who was also shot, survived. Since then, head coach Tony Elliott has sought to navigate a team’s trauma without precedent or playbook. Now, as Ganyard and Bettridge practice field goals before the game, the running backs warm up on the goal line with 11-year-old Deuce Hollins, Mike’s kid brother.

Each ball Ganyard and Bettridge send to the south end zone reaches toward the numbers 1-15-41. #41 is the number Will Bettridge wears now. When Coach Elliott offered it to Bettridge, he first called Happy Perry, D’Sean’s mother, to ask for her blessing. Bettridge grew up with D’Sean in Miami playing Pee Wee Football for the Palmetto Bay Broncos and attending Gulliver Prep. D’Sean was Bettridge’s mentor, his reason to attend U.Va. At the memorial service honoring all three victims, Bettridge told the crowd, “A piece of my life was taken from me.” Everything I do now, Will Bettridge said, is for you. I promise that I will make you proud.

Matt Ganyard is not a captain. His first season is his last. He is not here to give a speech. That’s the role of fifth-year backup quarterback and holder Jared Rayman. Ganyard is not the heart or the soul of the team, either; that’s running back and shooting survivor Mike Hollins. He is not a best friend or technically a mentor. Ganyard is a specialist. He kicks off. He’s a teammate. And if there is a time to have a 34-year-old teammate, this is the time and this is the team.

Ganyard and Bettridge switch to the north end zone, where Georgia Tech defensive lineman #8 Makius Scott, (6’4”, 297 pounds) arrives to remind us of football’s non-negotiable terms. “Y’all don’t know me!” Scott sings out to none and all. Resplendent in a white cut-off tee, gold shorts, and headphones shielded by braids, he takes a knee before the goal post. Assuming a four-point stance, he explodes—bam—into the foam cover and the yellow aluminum poles rattle and wobble.

Ganyard lands a few coffin corner kicks, the ball sailing out of bounds just before the end zone, as bam went Scott again and again, and it was the same rattle-wobble in our chest when three F-18 Super Hornets flew overhead before kickoff.

Earlier, on my way across campus, I barnacled onto a tailgate and told the assembly I was writing a story about Matt Ganyard. The old guy? Kicker? If a long field goal wins it, someone offered, Ganyard might be the hero of the day. “Not to go all Negative Nelly,” a fellow in blue Sperrys and orange Ray-Bans announced. “But we’re a two-win team, okay? And we’ve overachieved. This isn’t going to be decided by some 50 yard field goal.”

No high Rudy drama follows here. The final score is not the thing. Georgia Tech 45 – U.Va. 17. But that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to measure the limits of a DIY college kicking career and to see if Matt Ganyard is the Jordan Meme in a size 11 Nike Total90 super-glued cleat. And I took that personally.

Matt Ganyard’s father was also a Marine Corps pilot, for 28 years. And when Matt was growing up, the Ganyards moved five times: California to Virginia to California to South Carolina to Maryland to California. Teams provided instant belonging. Matt was a Blue Crab for Beaufort travel soccer, a Northwest Jaguar as 9th grade varsity soccer starter. That same year, he read The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara’s classic Civil War novel, and the story grabbed him. So much so his grandad drove up from Boca and they loaded up the maroon Altima to head north. For three days, they wandered the unquiet fields of Gettysburg, and a year later, his grandad gave him a .577 minie ball from the battlefield. Everywhere Ganyard has lived since, the small conical piece of lead has gone with him.

His nickname at Coronado High School across the bay from San Diego was MNK—short for Matt New Kid. It was a military town full of military kids, and so many Matts. But he tried to fit in. He painted his face green and white before football games. He wore a U.Va. polo. Four foot nothing, he grew to five foot nothing. On the soccer field, he was a sharpshooter, a goal scorer. After a mid-air collision with a goalie in the state playoffs, Ganyard lost part of his left ear, butterfly taped it back, and played the rest of the game with sweat and blood trailing down his neck. Coronado won 2-1.

At Virgina, it was Dr. Gary Gallagher’s 8 a.m. Civil War History Course that fired Ganyard’s imagination. He went to Antietam to take a six-hour walking tour of the battlefield that didn’t even offer any extra credit, then returned to Gallagher’s classroom for two more courses, office hours, and battlefield tours.

But it was his sophomore year at U.Va., when he decided he’d try to walk-on to the football team, that Matt Ganyard came into focus. When he first approached a team of assistants and special team staffers holding clipboards on a practice field, he allowed himself a Rudy moment. Just glad to be here, he thought. Can you punt? they asked. Sure, I can punt, he replied. Ganyard recalls: “I’m not a punter by any means of imagination. They pull out a stopwatch and I’m like, okay. They want me to kick it high and check out the hang time, not realizing they just want me to kick like a normal punt down the field to clock it. I was clueless. But then again, I wasn’t going out for punter.”

Ganyard was there to kick field goals. He shed Rudy, the fanboy, the punter, and embraced his own competitor. “I wanted to go out there and win a job,” he says. “They told me I can do three warm-up kicks. Just extra points. The first one I clanked off the post and I was like, Well, that got the nerves out.”

His next nine kicks, from distances of 25 to 45 yards out, were all good. Perfection. On his way home, Ganyard updated a friend who’d play college football. Nine for nine? Well then, his buddy said, you made it. Ganyard allowed himself that.

The email arrived two days later. It was a form message. “They clearly sent it to all those who tried out,” he recalls. “Thanks for trying out. Sorry, you didn’t make it, let us know if you want to try out again.”

Ganyard let them know: He did want to try out again. But a clerical error prevented his second attempt. The memory of his perfect tryout lingered.

“Yes, I wasn’t wearing a helmet,” he says of the tryout. “Yes, I wasn’t wearing pads or kicking with a snap. I understand that. But if that’s the trial to see what I can do and I ace the test, that’s about as good as you can do. What is a good field goal? It’s hard to disagree with whether it goes through the uprights or not. We know a kick is good when we see it.”

Ganyard graduated with a degree in history and a chip on his shoulder. “But the chip had to be a certain size,” he reflects now. If that chip is too big, it will bury you. If it’s too small, you might drift away. But the right-sized chip on your shoulder—that will propel you forward, a subtle force, like a breeze, both there and not there.

He wanted another shot. And he was willing to wait. As an officer in the Marine Corps, he committed to serve for ten years. He knew he’d continue his education afterward and would have eligibility. The dream was remote but real. “It was eight years off at one point and I’m thinking, okay, that’s a long time,” he says. “I’ll be, you know, 33 at that point. That’s pretty crazy to think about. I wonder what life would be like. And so you just go out and kick and you don’t stress about the details.”

There were other details for Ganyard to attend. He was never in a combat theater, but each time he took off, the risk was real. In World War II, more Army pilots died in training than combat. When he was growing up, 28 Marines died in training accidents where the Ganyards were stationed, including one of Ganyard’s former Little League coaches. Early in Ganyard’s duty, his buddy Adam was killed during a training exercise at the Twentynine Palms Marine base in the Southern California desert. Not far from the base, his helicopter fell from the sky.

Kicking provided a sense of pleasure in a world of extreme routine, and he approached it from a place of joy. “I was able to kind of spread it out over that time,” he says. “I never burned out.” There were constant obligations, between work and family, and at times he’d go a month without kicking. Then he came back from his deployment, in 2018, and became a flight instructor in San Diego. His schedule settled. He ramped up the kicking and created a system.

On a Powerpoint slide, Ganyard charted his accomplishments and his progression, month after month, year after year. He established a color-coded chart of kicking camps and windows to reach out to coaches. And he began nailing 50-yard field goals. “I could see what I accomplished when and what was on the radar for the months ahead,” he says. “I was able to help keep in perspective that there’s a lot ahead of you but you need to stay on track because was no path for me to follow.”

He uploaded videos of himself kicking and did training sessions with former NFL vet Nick Novak. Novak thought Ganyard wanted an NFL spot as a free agent. No, Ganyard explained, he wanted his MBA and the chance to kick again. He shared David Goggins memes and woke up at 4:15 to work out, but nothing insane. He wasn’t getting multiple workouts in during the day. “It’s not realistic when I’m trying to balance a family and another job,” he says. The Goldilocks chip kept him focused, and he developed a library of highlights. In January 2021, Matt reached out to U.Va. special teams analyst Drew Meyer and sent him his highlight reel. In the video, the evidence was clear—the pilot was a kicker. The two stayed in touch. Meyer told his U.Va. bosses, You won’t believe this….

In May 2022, the Virginia coaching staff told Ganyard they had a roster spot for him in the fall. Practice would be in the morning, though, which conflicted with mandatory first-year coursework at Darden. Ganyard appealed with the deans and was denied. Rules are rules. In his second and final year, his mornings were open, but the NCAA would not grant him another year of eligibility. His coursework was deemed too rigorous. Nevermind, Ganyard was in the top 15 percent of his class. He checked back in and appealed. The call came on a Friday. Practice started Monday.

“It sounded crazy to people like six years away,” he says. “I’m like, no, I’m not going to play pick-up soccer because, well, I don’t want to get injured.” Injured for what? A non-existent college football career? A fantasy camp? Kicking in college was like the Canadian girlfriend you met at summer camp. An idea. “The more I said it, the more my friends probably thought I was a lunatic. But those same friends have now been in the stands at the game. In a weird way, it all worked out.”

His new teammates first called him Pop-Pop, Grandpa, Uncle Matt. They’ve also noticed he’s something else: a Swiftie at heart. At workouts and on bus rides, both to and from the football facility, Ganyard is a 1989 guy. His teammates don’t share his enthusiasm. What?, he asked them. Do they think Taylor Swift is old? Yes, they say. She’s my age, Ganyard says. Yes, they say.

Every kicker walks a tightrope. You kick. Your teammates hit and get hit. In the land of rattle-wobble, the kicker is neither native nor tourist. Lavel Davis once told Bettridge that when his kids grew up he wanted them to be kickers. Why? Bettridge asked. Because you never do anything.

During the Georgia Tech game, Ganyard and Bettridge stand poised on the sideline as Tech kicks off. In Section 120 Row O, Ganyard’s wife, Marie, readies Savannah on her lap with her snowcone and her noise-canceling headphones.

For much of the half, Bettridge and Ganyard stand near the bench beside the kicking net. During a timeout, Ganyard turns and locks eyes with Savannah and gives her a little wave. But mostly, in the kicker’s tradition, Ganyard stands and checks. He checks down and distance. He checks in with the flags atop the goalposts and notes the ways of the wind. When U.Va. advances to the fifty yard line, he checks in with a warmup and yields to Bettridge. They stay on high alert. Every kicker must. A sudden turnover and the field position flips and the drive could come down to a swing of their leg. He’s a specialist, the kicker. His teams are special teams. Rules and customs abide. Don’t touch the kicker. Don’t talk to the kicker. Call timeout to freeze the kicker. Hey now! No roughing the kicker.

Matt Ganyard’s tightrope walk started with his vision. On his way to his first U.Va. fall practice, Ganyard knew he’d leveled up. Elite. Cooler than a card trick, he could really boot a football. Even in the presence of NFL kickers, real dudes. But that was off a tee. And those were for videos and moving his Powerpoint icon. That was over. This was real. The loneliness of the long-distance kicker was now turbocharged by eleven elite athletes blessed with otherworldly power and dexterity all straining to block his kick. Ganyard wanted to be a football player. Now, he was a football player. And here they came—the other football players.

Matt Ganyard on kicking alongside 20-year-old sophomore Will Bettridge

“I’ve always had a good ability to hit a strong ball,” Ganyard tells me. “My issue, especially coming into camp, was adjusting to the snap and hold and the rush. It was a challenge being disciplined and keeping my head down.”

There was much to see though. Whole worlds. Every kick also holds a question: Good? Bad? Which way? “The tendency is to want to see where the ball is going,” Ganyard explains. “So your head comes up almost exactly when you are hitting the ball, and if it comes up a millisecond too early, your body is coming up and you’ll pull it left.”

Ganyard had to train to keep his head down. Jared Rayman, U.Va.’s senior holder, started to tell him, Head Down, Head Down before each rep. Soon it became a routine complete with a ritual handshake and dual acknowledgement. “Head down,” Jared would say. “Head down,” Ganyard would reply. Ganyard now had a second voice, a check, a teammate.

As he got his head down, Ganyard’s place kicking advanced. Against Boston College, Coach Elliott was set to call his number from 50 yards out, but a penalty took U.Va. out of range. For all his special teams adaptation, there was one element of games Ganyard could never replicate in practice. After kicking off against the likes of Tennessee and N.C. State and Miami, and sprinting into the swirl of the bodies, Matt Ganyard could now report: “These guys…are really fast.”

For Will Bettridge, this year stretched a tightrope between head and heart. A season where every kick was dedicated to D’Sean each step could turn into a high-wire act. Early in the season, Bettridge asked Ganyard about calm. Ganyard taught Bettridge box breathing and drew imaginary lines with each breath: hold and release. One of U.Va.’s sports psychologists happened to introduce it to the team the following week, and they’ve been going over it every week since. “Maybe that gave me a little bit of credibility with the guys,” Ganyard told me with a shrug and a smile.

This season, Bettridge has found his center. After missing his first kick, against Tennessee, he nailed 12 straight. Before each game, he receives a text from D’Sean’s mother, Mrs. Perry. When U.Va. traveled to his hometown, Miami, he went four-for-four with her in attendance. In Bettridge’s quest to honor D’Sean, Ganyard has watched his teammate’s every step. “I’ll notice Will’s ball flight just to see how he’s hitting it and see where he is. How’s he feeling today?” Ganyard watches it all, taking in much, commenting on little. The attention, Ganyard insists, is mutual and beneficial.

“We are watching each other but not comparing or competing,” Ganyard says. “It’s more supportive. I’ll notice how he’s striking the ball, if his kicks are not what they usually are. We find moments on the sideline where it’s just us two away from coaches to check in. Hey, what happened there? How did that feel? How does that feel? We get it. Even though our bodies are different ages and certainly we’re going to feel different, the aches and pains… But a well struck ball is a well struck ball.”

A well struck ball separates signal from noise. At the end of the first quarter of the Georgia Tech game, Bettridge misses a 48-yard field goal. His first miss in two months. Ganyard greets him on the sideline. Flush it. Next one.

In the second quarter, Ganyard sits alone and Deuce Hollins joins him on the bench and wisely produces candy from his pocket. During a timeout, Ganyard pivots again and waves to Savannah. This fall, Marie has been tackling bath and bedtime. Ganyard is well aware of the lift she makes so he can pursue what he admits is “a rather childish dream.” Marie feels joy, but she worries too. Ganyard is living a dream, but hey!, that’s Savannah’s and Noah’s dad flying down field. Rattle-wobble. In San Diego, Marie worked as an occupational therapist at Intrepid Spirit Center, an outpatient clinic near Camp Pendleton. Her patients were veterans with traumatic brain injuries, often from multiple blast exposures. Marie led extensive eight-week sessions in memory work and navigating stressors through body awareness and breath. She knows how much can change in a snap.

Against Miami, Ganyard hit a kickoff short and the coverage leaked and here came the Miami return man and Ganyard lowered his shoulder. When Patriots rookie Adam Vinateri tackled Herschel Walker on a kickoff, Bill Parcells told him he was a real football player now. Ganyard’s introduction to real football came by tackling the Hurricane and jumping up in celebration. Marie held her breath. “It’s definitely been a roller coaster,” she says with a laugh. She’s grateful for the whole journey, but she’s looking forward to her husband being home.

Sophomore kicker Will Bettridge on his relationship with Ganyard

During the second half of the Georgia Tech game, Ganyard moves up and down the sideline, less confined to the kicking area. He’s more demonstrative when things go well because so little goes well this Saturday for the home team. A nod here. A fist bump there. Checking in, he explains. When Ganyard allows himself to zoom out, he’s found himself thinking about where Bettridge and the guys might be in processing last year’s tragedy. Because he didn’t know the fallen and joined this team so late, he’s outside that circle.

When U.Va. travels to Louisville for its next game, it will mark Ganyard’s return to the place of Adam’s funeral. The service was on a cold February day. Ganyard recalls clearly the miles of people that lined the road from the service to the burial site with American flags to pay their respects. Sharing the story of Adam with Bettridge to open his own grieving wounds would not fit on these fields. Why bend the unspeakable through the prism of his loss? Adam was not a lifelong friend or mentor. Bettridge’s grief too was magnified by the incongruence of the event. Adam was a copilot on a Marine helicopter flying over the desert. D’Sean, an Art major who played football, was riding home on a bus after a field trip.

But grief reshapes attention. When Matt Ganyard was in the air, he knew to check-in with the altitude reference, altimeter, and airspeed. The “keep-you-alive” gauges answer the questions: Which way is up? How high are you? How fast are you going? After Adam’s crash, Ganyard’s squad took three days to check-in. When Ganyard flew the same course days later, he checked-in. As an instructor, he told younger pilots to never go up if they weren’t right. Check-in with your gauges, Ganyard told them. Check-in with your co-pilot. Check in with yourself.

At the end of the Georgia Tech game, the kickers of both squads gather and shake hands. Good game. Good luck.

When I ask U.Va.’s special teams coach, Keith Gaither, about what type of teammate Ganyard has been to Bettridge, he corrects me. “A big brother,” Gaither says, his voice raspy. Gaither, who also coaches the running backs, explains that their bond is emblematic of the team. This team and these young men are not their record. “These kids are champions,” he says. He explains that every day, Ganyard lifts up his teammates, and even the coaches too. “Having him here is like having another coach,” Gaither says.

Bettridge tells me that because Ganyard wasn’t here last year, in a way he’s like an outsider looking in on last year’s tragedy. But for this year’s team, he’s provided a great resource. “He’s someone I can actually talk to,” Bettridge says. “Someone who I could go to and talk about classes or relationships or whatever. Someone I can just say, ‘You know, today has been a bad day.’”

When asked about his mission this season, Bettridge lights up. “It means the world to me trying to find a way to honor D’Sean,” he tells me. “After his passing, after the tragedy, I want to carry on his legacy and try to make his family and my family proud.” Bettridge pauses, smiles, and adds, “This brings me joy.”

Ganyard isn’t sure where Bettridge started; he wasn’t here last year. He only knows what he sees now. “He’s a mature guy,” Ganyard says, “a loyal guy.” He describes the shoes Bettridge wears before games, which are adorned with images of D’Sean’s art. He admires the way Bettridge has approached this season and is grateful to work with his Miami teammate, cloaked in a perpetual hoodie. (Anything below 72 degrees is cold.) Their bond—forged over hours spent honing their craft, checking-in, and standing around—allows for pain and pleasure, and for plenty of talk about the past and the future. Once, Bettridge told Ganyard he wanted to have kids himself. Ganyard nodded, did the math, and realized Bettridge is almost closer in age to Savannah than to himself.

“Kids are great,” Ganyard said, “But you think it might be better to start with a dog?”

Ganyard and Marie’s golden retriever Layla jumps up and greets him most nights. If it’s late, he’ll put his dinner in the microwave and pop it out before the beep. For reasons unknown, he leaves seconds on the microwave clock. Marie laughs and asks why. A play clock stopped? Scoreboard frozen? An illusion that time can slow down?

Between convincing Savannah to wear pants to preschool and taking Noah to the hospital to get stitches removed, Marie finds herself late-night Zillowing with Netflix in the background. Ganyard’s new job with Boston Consulting Group will take them to Raleigh. But that’s next year and last week Noah took his yogurt and spread it in his hair and tossed it into Layla’s fur and splattered the kitchen floor and the volume on the TV got louder and when Marie told Noah to stop, please stop, Savannah stopped her mother.

“Take a deep breath,” Savannah said, quoting Daniel Tiger, “and count to four.”

After bedtime, Ganyard checks in with Marie about Savannah and her Angelina Ballerina books and Noah’s stitches. He checks in with his Whoop for data on his levels of strain, stress, and recovery. He checks in with his coursework. In his reading seminar on management, the class tackled John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood: The story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. An epic tale about the consequences of not checking-in. Not checking in with lab results on platelet activity and glucose tests before courting more investors. Not checking email before a press release. A systematic failure to heed a slew of laboratory quality-control tests. Checking in is how lives are saved. How helicopters fly. How kicks are made.

Before bed, Ganyard stretches. His legs have never been this tired. Throughout the night, he and Marie take turns with Noah and play Carter Faith’s “Leaving Tennessee” softly on repeat. Back in California, Ganyard soothed Savannah to the song and could shift her from shoulder to crib like magic. Now, he feels the weight of Noah on his chest and listens to his breath rise and fall.

I stand in the tunnel as the U.Va. players enter in a solemn march, cleats clanking. Earlier, at a roadside tailgate, I asked an old-timer what he made of Matt Ganyard’s journey. “Cool as hell,” he said. “Determination. Dedication, right?” Right, I said and asked if being a fan of U.Va. football required dedication. He grabbed my arm and counted the season’s close calls. Think about this, he said, squeezing. “We’ve won national titles in baseball, basketball, swimming, lacrosse, tennis.” I think about it. “Our greatness,” he said, “is our curse.”

In the tunnel, head Coach Tony Elliott does a media spot for the school. Sweat beads his head. Coach Elliott trusted Coach Gaither, who trusted Coach Meyer, who trusted his eyes: The pilot was a kicker. When he first met Ganyard, Tony Elliott smiled and said, “So you’re real.” Real now is the responsibility Elliott takes for the loss. Starts with me. He speaks of a week with short rest. No excuses. They’ll prepare for Louisville. Thanks, Coach. The press waits in the next room as Elliott leans back and sighs. This game gathers and exhausts seas of emotion.

In such a swell, Oregon’s head coach, Dan Lanning, punctuated his October 29th post-game press conference with a plea. Oregon’s program regularly holds “Get Real” player-led meetings. These check-ins give players platforms to reflect on life outside of football. Prompted by their voices and stories on the impact of gun violence, Lanning spoke about the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, where a former Army reservist killed 14. The mass shooting marked the 565th in America this year. He urged lawmakers to act. “I’m not trying to be political,” Lanning said, “but I do care about human life and I do care about human decency. And I’m hoping that at some point we can take a stand and do something about it.”

It’s Saturday night in Charlottesville, and I walk back onto the empty field. When Virginia Tech arrives three weeks from now to close the season, it will mark the end of Matt Ganyard’s improbable college football odyssey. Atop the goalposts, the orange flags lie still. In the south end zone, the numbers of the fallen are illuminated between the two yellow poles. 1-15-41.

Beyond Scott Stadium, up the spine of the Allegheny, Matt Ganyard walked the grounds at Gettysburg, where Lincoln asked who we, the people, might be. Sometimes Ganyard and Marie marvel at the America they’ve seen. The morning mist of Carolina. Autumn in Shenandoah. Coronado sunsets. They’re troubled, like you and I, by a world where preschools like Savannah’s conduct lockdown drills. But now we are engaged in an undeclared war of spastic, asymmetrical violence. Replete with vigils and promises never to forget, though we’re often unsure of what to remember.

One of D’Sean Perry’s final works of art was a video requiem on gun violence. His digital art remains saved on his laptop, which is being held as state evidence in Albemarle Circuit Court. Our greatness, our curse.

Yet none of this is inevitable, like some weather. We make and remake the world everyday with commitments and choices. Mike Hollins was already off the bus when he heard the shots and ran back toward the fire. Hollins once told Coach Gaither he was not comfortable with that term. Hero. But for today and perhaps tomorrow to be a teammate is enough.

Late in the first half against Georgia Tech, Virginia approaches midfield and Ganyard gathers Bettridge. A crossing pattern puts the ball down at Tech’s 22. Timeout Cavaliers. Six seconds remain. Ganyard watches Bettridge jog out for a 39-yard field goal attempt. A breeze blows from the north as #41 takes three steps back, two steps over, and inhales. Focused on a patch of worn earth, he lets the breath go, and nods.

“I’m privileged to be able to play out there with those guys,” Ganyard later tells me. “They are mature heroes and mature champions and I’m lucky to be able to join this team.”

Snap is clean. Hold is down. The kick is up. And the kick, you wonder? The kick was good.

Jeremy Collins is a writer in Atlanta whose work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Esquire, and Best American Sports Writing. This is his first story for GQ.

Originally Appeared on GQ