Staring into the eyes of the uprights, with no movement to the left and stillness to the right, the ball is snapped. The brain tunes out the thousands of fans hoping for failure on the first step. The left foot delicately but firmly graces the football on the second step. The kick is up, and all he can do is watch.
The whirlwind of kicking a football might be lonely for some, but for the Sun Devils’ “cold-blooded” kicker, Jesus Gomez, it couldn’t feel more like home.
Gomez, who is part of the just 3% of high school football players who continue onto the Division I level, was raised in Puebla, an industrial city two hours southeast of Mexico City. Even though American football is becoming more popular in Mexico, thanks in part to the NFL’s international presence, Gomez said the country is still typically associated with baseball and soccer.
“That’s really hard,” he said about getting recruited out of Mexico. “If it’s hard to get recruited from here, in the U.S., it’s even harder to get recruited from Mexico because no one is going to really think there is a good player in Mexico, to be honest.”
Gomez didn’t let that tear down his goals, though.
In addition to playing for Prepa Tec Puebla High School, he said that he and his father attended 14 different kicking camps in the United States over the course of a year and a half, between 2018 and 2020. Those countless hours of practice led to him being a Kohl’s Kicking five-star recruit, where he was ranked the No. 13 kicker in the class of 2021.
That grind put him in conversations with Eastern Michigan University, where he was eventually recruited to play in an Eagles uniform. Though playing for a Division I program was Gomez’s goal, it also meant that he had to pack up his life and move more than 2,000 miles away.
“I remember my freshman year, the first day I was alone in Michigan, I was crying,” he said. “It was actually the first time I was away from family. I would never leave home. … It was super hard.”
Like anything else, things got easier with time. After only appearing in two games for the Eagles in 2021, he made 46 field goals over the next three years, never dipping below a 75% clip. This led to multiple All-MAC selections alongside many other recognitions.
His success also brought other opportunities, allowing him to take advantage of the transfer portal and move up to the Power Four level. Charlie Ragle, ASU football’s assistant head coach and special teams coordinator, was instrumental in bringing Gomez to the desert.
It was clear that a new leg was needed in the desert after ASU coach Kenny Dillingham publicly called for kicking tryouts last season after the team suffered kicking woes. Though Dillingham eventually apologized for the comments, the problems didn’t disappear.
The Sun Devils’ kicking room hit just 55% of their 20 field goal attempts in 2024, putting them at the second-to-worst percentage in the FBS, which, in part, likely led to ASU being tied at No. 8 in the country in fourth-down attempts last year with 36.
Enter six-foot-two transfer Gomez.
“The explosiveness in which the ball comes off of his foot, the body of work, three years close to 80% career field goal percentage, that was a big piece of it,” Ragle said. “Then once we got him out here on his recruiting visit, his demeanor and his approach were all things that (we) really thought would fit our program.”
After a detailed recruitment process and another move across the country, it might have been understandable if Gomez struggled early in the season, but that problem never arose. Through five games, as the No. 21 Sun Devils have cruised to a 4-1 record heading into Saturday’s road game against 4-1 Utah, Gomez has already sent 11 of 14 field goal attempts through the uprights, which is as many as ASU’s entire kicking room converted in 2024.
In ASU’s last two games, against Baylor and TCU, Gomez hit the winner both times. His 43-yarder against the Bears gave the Sun Devils a 27-24 victory as the clock expired, and one week later, he nailed a 23-yarder with 1:14 left against the Horned Frogs that helped ASU seal the win.
“I never had a doubt in the dude,” Dillingham said. “When somebody prepares, you want them to have the ball, and he prepares in a way that you want him to have the ball in the biggest moments, and whether it goes in or not, I can sleep at night knowing he’s kicking it.”
JESUS GOMEZ GOES RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE TO WIN IT FOR THE SUN DEVILS ‼️@ASUFootball pic.twitter.com/noIihURBkr
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) September 21, 2025
Gomez’s sister, Yesika Gomez Juarez, said that during the Baylor game, when her brother was lining up the 43-yarder with just seconds left, she couldn’t even watch; she was too nervous and had to leave the room.
The following week, she found herself in the sea of darkness that was the Sun Devils’ blackout game against ranked TCU, where she witnessed her brother and his teammates claw back, tooth and nail, after falling behind 17-0. Gomez and his leg coming up clutch again in the final moments provided the cherry on top.
Those two boots made him just the fifth FBS player since 2015 to make game-winning field goals in back-to-back games with under two minutes left, and the first Big 12 player to do it since Oklahoma State’s Ben Grogan in 2015. Gomez is the first to accomplish the feat since Kent State’s Matthew Trickett in November 2023.
After putting the nail in Baylor’s coffin, which Gomez noted was his all-time favorite make, he said that ASU feels like home. Mountain America Stadium, the coaching staff, his teammates and Kajikawa Practice Fields have all helped Gomez find his comfort zone.
His sister has watched Gomez fall in love with ASU, and she’s seen a change in him.
“This week, he has a break for three days because they don’t have a game, and he decided to stay (in Tempe),” she said. “While in Eastern (Michigan), every time he could, he would come (home), even if it was for two days.”
Like her brother, she is also studying at Prepa Tec and is currently trekking through her senior year. Also, like her brother, she’s getting recruited to ASU, only the recruiting team is just Gomez himself.
“I’m going to college next year, and he wants me to go to ASU,” she said. “He’s happy there. He’s really happy there, because if he wasn’t happy there, he wouldn’t be telling me to apply to ASU.”
Despite the fact that campus is more than 1,500 miles from home, Gomez said he doesn’t want to be in Mexico right now. Yes, he misses his parents, sister and the rest of his family, but he wants to be in Tempe. He wants to be in the weight room. He wants to be practicing out in the sun. He wants to be under the lights, surrounded by nearly 54,000 screaming Sun Devil fans in Mountain America Stadium.
“My teammates (make it feel like home), just having fun around them,” Gomez said. “Getting to the building at 6 a.m. and seeing their energy, it just makes it so much easier to be here, and ever since I got here, it just felt like home.”
One of those teammates is Cade Davis, a Sun Devils long snapper, who spends ample time around Gomez every day.
In Davis’s eyes, there is just one version of Gomez, one who doesn’t stop working. Ragle mirrored this opinion, saying that Gomez is consistent; he never gets up too high or down too low.
“He never has a bad day,” Davis said. “You get the same Jesus every single day. He’s a great dude to be around, really brings everyone up. I mean, whether he makes it or misses it, he’s finding what he could have done better.”
Since Gomez arrived in Tempe, Davis said the kicker has opened up a lot. When ASU’s special teams are finished with their final practice sessions, they “chop it up” about really anything but football. He said Gomez cracks jokes often and is just a great person to be around.
“This is my fifth school,” Davis said. “I know every room isn’t always like dudes are the best of friends.
“This is really the first place I’ve been where it’s like that, but I think it’s awesome.”