Ten thousand, two hundred and eighty-six miles. That is the distance between Melbourne, Australia and Philadelphia. It it the distance that punter Daniel Gold has traveled to study at Penn and play for the football team.
Gold is currently spending the year in a study abroad program at Wharton. He is a full-time student at the University of Melbourne, where he plays Australian rules football.
After graduating from high school in 2002, Gold spent the traditional Australian gap year between high school and college in the United States. He spent the summer as a camp counselor in New Hampshire where he met the punter for New Mexico.
When camp ended, the Lobos' punter introduced Gold to punting and gave him a leather football to bring back to Australia, where plastic balls are the standard. Gold had already been used to kicking oblong balls from playing Australian rules football.
He said to Gold, "that's unreal, you've got real potential."
Back in the Land Down Under, Gold would loiter in his local park punting the ball, jogging to its landing spot and kicking it. He was constantly ribbed by his friends for his unique passion.
"I didn't know the technique; everything was completely messed up," Gold said.
While Gold may have stumbled upon American football by mistake, joining Penn's varsity squad may have required a little luck. But it was far from accidental.
Once he found out that he had been accepted to Penn, Gold began his efforts to play on the Penn football team. He filled out an online recruitment form and wrote to Penn coaches about the possibility of trying out for the team.
Making the team may have been fate. While in the United States two years ago, he visited Philadelphia and magically stumbled through the blue iron gates of Franklin Field and witnessed a summer practice for the Quakers football team.
Gold went through an exhaustive process of convincing officials and finding loopholes in NCAA regulations to finally make it to the Penn team.
"I think it was good luck more than anything else," Gold said.
As part of the process of selling himself to the coaching staff, Gold submitted a recruitment tape. However, he had no idea what he was doing. He filmed himself punting and retrieving his punts as well as his stretching technique.
"It's like a skit out of a Saturday Night Live," coach Al Bagnoli said.
The tape is still joked about frequently by his teammates and coaches. For Bagnoli, Gold believes it is "the most comic recruitment tape he has ever seen in his life."
Gold got his first opportunity to punt in a varsity game this past weekend against Yale. That opportunity was very special for Gold, who landed a 25-yard punt out of bounds at the Yale 15-yard line.
To make the moment more special, Gold's parents took the University's Parents Weekend quite seriously and attended Saturday's game.
"My parents mean the most incredible amount for me," Gold said.
"I think anyone who travels 12,000 miles deserves to see their kid play," Bagnoli said.
Being the first foreign student on the Penn football team, Gold has taken the initiative to investigate other Australian punters playing American football.
At the moment, there are three in the NFL. Gold has started a correspondence with former NFL punter Darren Bennett, who enjoyed a 10-year career Bennett has given Gold advice, autographs and cleats.
Gold's humor and character has won over his teammates.
"He's great, just his mannerisms. No one does what he does; he is just foreign," starting punter Anthony Melillo said of the punter from Down Under.
