Ex-UA kicker 'not afraid to say I’m Alex Zendejas'

He’s not quite clean-shaven but is clean-cut, with a beard extending from one sideburn to his chin and up the other side.

He wears shorts and a long-sleeve T-shirt bearing his father’s name at the center, which is also, actually, his name too.

“Did you watch that game on Saturday?” Alex Zendejas asks. “That was crazy.”

He is talking about Arizona’s Nov. 15 win over Washington at Arizona Stadium. The one that UA kicker Casey Skowron won by hitting a 47-yard field goal as time expired, just one month after missing a likely game-winner in the final seconds against USC.

Zendejas watched the game from his couch.

“I was really happy for him,” he says, “the kicker.”

Zendejas has been there.

‘Bad day for me’

Zendejas remembers that day, that game, like it was yesterday.

How he reacted, how he felt.

The former UA kicker missed two extra points in the 2010 Territorial Cup game against ASU. Those two points would have been the difference in what turned into a 30-29, double-overtime loss.

To many fans, his performance was unacceptable, deplorable, reprehensible — especially since it happened in Tucson. You can’t do that in this game, in this town, against that team.

One year earlier, Zendejas hit the game-winner against the Sun Devils, and he was a hero. That was short-lived.

Instead, his Wildcats career has been defined by two misses.

Four years later, fans from both sides still remind him.

“That’s going to come up for the rest of my life,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “It was a bad day for me. But I’ve turned it into a positive now.”

But he still remembers.

Kick felt good, but …

The ball is placed at the 3-yard line for extra points. Add in 7 yards for the snap and 10 yards for the end zone, and it’s a 20-yard kick. Automatic.

And this one, at the end of regulation against ASU, for the win, felt good.

As good as the two he kicked earlier in the game, in the third quarter, both times coming after a Nick Foles touchdown pass to Juron Criner.

This one, after a Foles touchdown to David Douglas tied the game at 20 with 27 seconds left, would have won the game.

Chase Gorham’s snap was fine, maybe a little high. Keenyn Crier, the team’s punter and holder, caught it, and brought it down to the turf.

Zendejas stared the ball down and struck it, and he felt good. It felt good.

“It was a great kick,” says Alex Zendejas Sr., the former Wildcat’s father, “but the guy jumped up like you wouldn’t believe.”

That guy was James Brooks, ASU’s mammoth defensive end. The 6-foot-5-inch, 278-pounder jumped from the center of the line of scrimmage, and tipped the ball with his outstretched hand.

The ball fell to the ground, far short of the goal posts. Overtime.

Zendejas retreated to the sideline, where he passed Mike Stoops. The UA’s head coach stomped up and down the sideline and shouted in the distraught senior kicker’s face some words best paraphrased as, “What happened?”

Zendejas wasn’t sure.

“I was shocked,” he says now. “The kick felt good, so you start questioning things a little bit.”

Crier, Zendejas’ roommate and best friend, found him on the sideline.

“I told him, it’s like, dude, (expletive) it,” Crier says. “If we need you at the last second, you’ll be there. There’s more game to played. It’s not over yet.”

Game-winner in 2009

Zendejas had no reason to believe he would fail. A year earlier, after all, he had taken down the Sun Devils by himself.

The 2009 Territorial Cup game took place in Tempe, just down the street from where Zendejas sits now, nibbling a grilled protein bowl with shrimp, roasted broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, onions, cilantro and rice.

He squeezes some Sriracha into the bowl and nods in the direction of Sun Devil Stadium.

“It was in this stadium over here,” he says. “I’ll never forget that one.”

It was Nov. 28, an afternoon game. He felt good — even after he missed a 30-yard field goal in the second quarter.

When he missed, with Arizona leading 7-0, one of Alex Sr.’s friends, an ASU alum, fired off a text: “Game over.”

Alex Zendejas Sr. saw it, but he wasn’t worried. He sees things, believes in signs, gets feelings. As clouds rolled in to Phoenix’s east valley, the elder Zendejas felt a sense of calm.

“I just said to myself, ‘This is gonna be the day,’ ” he says.

He was right. ASU’s Kyle Williams muffed a punt with just over a minute remaining and the game tied, and the Wildcats recovered.

On the visitor’s sideline, Alex started warming up. He knew the game would come down to him.

Arizona moved the ball to the 15, and Zendejas lined up for the 32-yard field goal. The snap, hold and kick were all perfect. The UA won 20-17 as time expired.

Zendejas threw his hands in the air, jumped and ran to the sideline, trying to find his family. He ditched Crier and long-snapper Jason Bertoni, even though they had a three-man celebratory handshake planned.

“As soon as he kicked it and made it, I had my hands up like, ‘Oh it’s good!’ ” Crier said. “And then he just takes off running down the field, and I’m like, ‘Wait!’ So me and Bertoni just run after him. That was my favorite moment.”

Afterward, in the locker room, Stoops handed Zendejas the game ball.

He was on top of the world.

“That boosted his confidence,” Crier says.

“Every little thing a kicker does, it’s like climbing a mountain.”

Game-loser in 2010

One week before that game in 2010, the Wildcats went to Eugene, Oregon, to play the No. 1-ranked Oregon Ducks.

Just before halftime, Zendejas attempted a 29-yard field goal, kicked it and converted. It didn’t count, though, as Oregon coach Chip Kelly called a timeout. It’s called “icing” the kicker.

So Zendejas trotted out again and made it again. As it passed through the uprights, he ran to midfield at Autzen Stadium, pointed at Kelly and taunted him, eliciting a chorus of boos from the Ducks raucous fan base.

“We’re both quiet guys and keep to ourselves,” Crier says now. “When he did that, I was like … where did that come from?”

Zendejas says he regrets acting out. One week later against the Sun Devils, he did it again.

It started with a shot at redemption.

In the first overtime, Zendejas made a chip shot — a 19-yard field goal, which ASU matched with a 40-yarder from Thomas Weber.

In the second overtime, ASU’s Cameron Marshall scored a touchdown, which — with a successful Weber PAT — made it 30-23.

Arizona’s offense matched, scoring on a 9-yard end around to receiver Douglas.

It was up to Zendejas, again.

“I started to … I don’t know … think about what happened with the first one,” Zendejas says. “You’re like, ‘Well, maybe I have to kick it a little bit higher.’ Worst thing you can do is question yourself, I did a little bit on that one, questioned myself as I went out there, tried to change stuff up.

“And the end result was what it was.”

The crowd let him know what happened. Brooks leapt into the air, and into Zendejas’ nightmares, with his second block of the game. No good.

Zendejas unbuckled his helmet, slammed it onto the Arizona Stadium turf, and screamed in dismay as Sun Devils stormed the field.

He walked toward the locker room, alone.

By the time he reached the north end zone, Arizona fans had turned on him. They hurled expletives at the kicker and Zendejas barked back before being escorted off the field.

Following the game, Zendejas sat by his locker, alone, with a towel draped over his head.

Quarterback Nick Foles told him to keep his head up. Crier, Bertoni and receiver David Roberts did the same.

“I just remember him after in the locker room, trying to sit with him, and that was hard,” former UA special teams coach Jeff Hammerschmidt says. “I told him that we all loved him.”

Arizona fans felt differently.

“it was a tough time”

Zendejas returned to the UA’s campus the following day, to present to his economics class. He parked in the Sixth Street Garage and took the long walk to the Caesar E. Chavez Building, near Old Main.

As he walked through campus, a couple of students yelled at him, cursed, and tried to start a fight. He kept walking.

In his classroom, of about 15-20 people, most of them were reading the day’s Arizona Daily Wildcat, his face plastered over the front cover.

“The kids are reading it, and you see them whispering to each other, ‘Is that him?’ ” Zendejas says. “I was like, yeah, that’s me.

“I don’t think I did very well on that presentation. My mind was everywhere.”

A few weeks later, Zendejas went to McKale Center for a basketball game, accompanied by Crier and Bertoni. Some fans in the Zona Zoo student section recognized Zendejas and started chanting at him.

“We were ready to fight them,” Crier says.

But they didn’t.

“It was a tough 24 hours. It was a tough week, a tough two weeks. It was a tough time,” Alex Sr. says.

“But we got through it. We continued going forward, told him to try to put it behind you. Like they say, ‘You’re gonna go forward, but it’s gonna be hard to forget.’”

Zendejas today

Zendejas, 25, has moved forward.

The Glendale native lives in Tempe with Jon Mora, a former Pima College and UA kicker who finished his career at — believe it — Arizona State.

Zendejas, whose uncle Max Zendejas kicked for the UA from 1982-85, works mornings at Goldie’s Motors in Phoenix.

The rest of the day is spent bouncing around town, coaching kickers, training them.

Together, he and his father have about 35 clients in the Phoenix area. He has trained kickers at Thunderbird, Cactus, Centennial and Sunrise Mountain high schools.

His first meeting with a kicker — and his parents — often goes the same way.

They hear his name.

Alex Zendejas … wait. Are you the one with that kick against ASU?

“And I’ll say, ‘Yeah, I hit the game-winning one,’ ” he says, smiling.

No, not that one.

Still smiling, he responds, “Yeah, that’s me.”

“At the time, yeah, it sucked,” he says. “No one wants that to happen, especially in front of your home crowd, rivalry game, so many people put so much on that game.

“But that kick, now looking back, I’m not happy it happened, and I don’t think I’ll ever be happy it happened, but I turned it into a positive, taking it into my life. You’re not gonna make everything; that’s just not how life’s gonna be.”

“I can’t hide from it,” he adds. “But I don’t want to, because it happened. I’m not gonna go sit in my house 24/7 and cry about it, that I wish it didn’t happen.

“I’m not afraid to say I’m Alex Zendejas.”