The star kicker for the Dos Pueblos football team is known as Greg the Leg. Well, this man has a name, Greg Tripathi (12), who’s an athlete and a student at DPHS.

Greg began playing flag football in elementary school. “I really enjoyed it. Obviously, there’s no kicking in [flag football], but you know, I just thought that it’d be a good experience and it was something that I liked doing as a sport,” expressed Greg.

After a few years of flag football, Greg made the jump to high school football his freshman year. “Kian will always tell me that he was the one who made me play football freshman year… I don’t think this is true. But he does. So I guess you could say, hypothetically, he influenced me,” mentioned Greg, when referring to his best friend, Kian Greene.

Greg missed the football tryouts his freshman year. But he took that inconvenience and transformed it into motivation, as the very next day he went to the field to kick some field goals for fun. Lucky for him, the coaches were observing and according to them, Greg deserved a spot on the team more than any other kicker. Halfway through freshman year, he began hearing talk about how good he was, and the potential people saw. The next year he started playing varsity, then became the starting kicker that DP students know.

To Greg, practice doesn’t make perfect, because there is no perfect, but practice does make improvement. Every day he kicks and takes videos, translating that practice into improvement. “Whenever I make mistakes…and I make mistakes a lot, I look back at the footage, really analyze it, [and] see what went wrong,” added Greg.

The ultimate goal is to play d1 college football, but Greg also believes that academics are going to make a bigger impact on his future. “Somewhere where I can get a good degree would be ideal in either engineering or business…especially if I can get into a school that I wouldn’t normally be able to get into for academics…athletics could help me,” said Greg.

“For sure, a lot of ups and downs. But I enjoyed my time. It’s been fun,” concluded Greg Tripathi.