Jamie Boyle’s unusual path

New York captain Jamie Boyle has taken the road less travelled to captaining an inter county side.

Boyle, who is American born and whose grandparents hail from County Donegal, has attracted interest from the NFL en route to becoming New York captain.

From a young age, although he played Gaelic Football with St Brendan’s, it was looked his future was in American football.

“I played soccer growing up and then the American football coach in high school, they were looking for a kicker and I was like, ‘how hard can that be?’ So my sophomore year at high school I started kicking American football.”

“I had a really good year and I started getting some college interest. So I dropped soccer and I kept playing American football. I actually went to college to kick, so kind of continued doing that down in Florida (with the University of Central Florida). I was decent at that.”

Playing at such a good level at college exposed him to interest from the NFL.

“I had difficulty getting on the field the first few years (with UCF), just the competition was extremely tough.

“My last year though I had a strong senior year. Everybody does pro days, all the NFL coaches would come down to your school and you do all the tests in front of them

“But it’s so tough especially for a kicker in the NFL, because there are only 32 spots for a guy kicking field goals, only 32 spots for punters, so it’s extremely competitive.

“I had some of their scouts come down and emailing me, but just being honest I’d say almost every division one kid is getting those looks and that kind of correspondence, so nothing serious to be honest.”

After graduating from UCF, he returned home to New York and to playing GAA.

“I stopped playing with St. Brendan’s at U-16. I was going away every weekend to train and go to camps and go to scouting combines for American Football kicking. So I stopped at U-16 and didn’t play all through college,” he said.

“I moved back to New York and got a job and played but didn’t really put a full effort into it. I was playing with Donegal New York for a year and a half when I was 22/23. I didn’t play at all then until I was 28 when I came back with St Barnabas.”

This has led him down a path where he now captains the side. Boyle is now part of a growing ‘native’ presence in the New York side.

Ironically enough, his former college side the UCF Knights travelled to Croke Park in 2014 to play against the Penn State Nittany Lions. This came two years after Boyle’s graduation so he missed out.

But his time with New York now means that he’s 70 minutes away from a berth in Croker, should they manage to beat Offaly in Tullamore, which would guarantee qualification for the Tailteann Cup semi finals.

New York play Offaly in O’Connor Park this Saturday, July 4th. Throw in is at 2pm.

Formerly DCU Journalism, covering mainly Athlone teams for finalwhistle.ie

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