Nick Lowery: Ballet, Rejection, and the Kicker Who Wouldn’t Quit
Where does a kicker’s mindset come from?
Probably not the football field. Nick Lowery was born in Germany, and his parents were the kind of people who talked about global history, public service, and doing well in school over dinner. Moving between cultures taught him to adapt. It also left him with a belief that shaped everything after: if you’ve been given advantages, you owe something back. So when sports entered the picture, he wasn’t only asking “can I win?” He was also asking what the winning was for.
Why did he trade baseball for ballet at Dartmouth?
He’d always been a good all-around athlete, with a muddy high school game-winning kick that people still bring up. Then at Dartmouth he dropped baseball and signed up for ballet. Funny choice for a football player, but think about what a placekicker actually does. His whole job comes down to one swing, and ballet gave him balance, body awareness, and precision. If you’re an athlete, a founder, or anyone whose work depends on getting one moment right, it’s worth asking what odd training could sharpen that. Sometimes the useful skill comes from somewhere you’d never think to look.
What was it like getting passed over and cut?
Rough, and he doesn’t pretend otherwise. He got skipped in the draft, got cut, and kept going back to tryouts. What he says scared him most was the thought that if he put everything into this and it still didn’t work, the dream would be over for good. His fix for imposter syndrome is pretty direct: work hard enough that you can trust yourself. He took offseason jobs in Washington, partly so football wasn’t the only thing he was good at.
When the Kansas City Chiefs finally called, he almost turned them down. A mentor talked him into it with one idea: you’ll always wonder if you don’t find out. So he found out.
What’s a kicker’s “mental office”?
It’s a private space in your head where distractions aren’t allowed, including your own doubts. Lowery explains how he prepared, how he used sensory cues, and why trying to be perfect ruins the kick. The thinking part of your brain butts in and wrecks a motion your body already knows. His trigger word is “explode,” a reminder to let go and trust the hundreds of thousands of reps already stored in his body. Build a routine, practice it until you don’t have to think about it, and when the pressure peaks, let it run.
How do you handle the criticism when everyone remembers the miss?
Kickers get blamed more than most players, and Lowery says you can’t build your confidence on what the crowd thinks that day. The standard has to come from you. He also admits something about reaching the top: it gets lonely up there if you haven’t thought about who you’ll share it with.
What does he do with the success now?
He spends it on other people. After football he studied at Harvard’s Kennedy School and went on to start Native Vision, a sports-based youth program that brings confidence, connection, and hope to Native American communities. His point is that the wins mean more when they help somebody else stand a little taller.
