Girlfriend’s guidance leads Sanchez to record pace

Rigo Sanchez makes it all look so easy, so automatic these days as the University of Hawaii’s kicking specialist.

Eleven-for-11 on field goals, 35-for-35 on point-after attempts, a 44.9-yard average on punts and 60 yards on kickoffs with 15 touchbacks.

Yet, for all the seeming ease with which he performs his myriad duties, the Rainbow Warriors’ kicker needed, well, a little kick just to get from Hamilton City, Calif., to UH in the first place.

Some of Jason Elam’s long-enduring school records might not be under siege now if it were not for a soccer player who helped push Sanchez into a higher gear to follow his dreams.

Monday, two days after UH plays Fresno State, will mark the third anniversary that Sanchez and his girlfriend, Cynthia Ramirez, have been together. It is a fortuitous union for both him and the ‘Bows that Sanchez celebrates.

“She congratulates me for what I’m doing and I’m like, ‘No, thank you,’ because all she has done for me,” Sanchez said. “She is such a wonderful person and a big part of my life.”

“She has been very good for him, a very positive influence driving him,” said Abel Hernandez, Sanchez’s kicking coach in high school and junior college in California.

Sanchez might be at a Division II school or, who knows where, these days without her, he readily acknowledges.

Sanchez was at Butte (Calif.) Community College in Oroville and slowly grinding his way toward NCAA eligibility when he and Ramirez finally hooked up. In the Northern California soccer community, “we’d known each other pretty much most of our lives, but it had been like ‘hi’ or ‘hello’ and that was it,” Sanchez recalls.

They started going out his sophomore year at Butte, where he was demonstrating Division I talent but facing an uphill task to qualify for a scholarship. “At first I had some classes that wouldn’t (count toward a degree). So, at some point I had to take a lot of credits to get to UH and she definitely played a role in helping me to get there,” Sanchez said.

She pointed him toward tutorials, helped him select classes, went over course material and, “pushed me that extra mile to get things done on time,” Sanchez said.

He spent an extra semester at community college and, at one point, tackled an 18-unit course load, to ensure he gained eligibility at UH as a sociology major.

There were times “when I thought I should put in more time on kicking practice, but she said, ‘No, you should do this (class) assignment first.’ She kept me on track. I always had the dream (of college football), but she was there to help me achieve it.”

And if that wasn’t enough, “sometimes she would go shag (kicks) for me,” Sanchez said.

Along the way, Ramirez, a psychology major, has come to “know a lot about kicking,” Sanchez said. “She can tell if the ball is hit well and evaluate kickers.”

When UH offered a scholarship, “that’s all he had to hear, he was gone,” Hernandez said.

But not before first getting Ramirez to pledge to come with him.

They are the first in their families, he of five children and she of four, to attend college. “We know we have to be role models for our brothers and sisters to follow in our footsteps,” Sanchez said.

“We sat next to each other for graduation (at Butte) and our plan is to graduate together in the spring at UH,” Sanchez said.

By then he might well have replaced Elam as the career record holder for punting average and single-season field goal percentage.

As for marriage, Sanchez said, “I’m hoping one day that can happen. I know I’ve been blessed.”