June 21, 2009
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Around the Nashville metropolitan area, the surname Del Greco conjures up memories of made extra points and game-winning field goals, but on the west side of the city at Vanderbilt University, there is another Del Greco making a name for himself for an entirely different reason.
Trey Del Greco, son of former NFL kicker Al Del Greco, has returned to the city where his dad spent the final years of his professional career with the Tennessee Titans and is making an immediate impact as a freshman on Vanderbilt’s golf team.
Coming to Vanderbilt has been a bit of homecoming for Trey, who spent much of his youth rotating between the city where his father was playing that season and back to Birmingham, Ala., during the offseason. When the Houston Oilers made the permanent move to Nashville for the 1998 season, so did Trey.
“Birmingham was always our home, but Nashville was always a home away from home, and it was the same way in Houston,” Trey said.
The familiarity with the city made the Del Grecos comfortable with Trey coming to Vanderbilt, but it was during their visit to Vanderbilt when they knew it was the place.
“We knew Nashville was a great city to live in,” Al said. “We played that one year in the stadium there but really spent time in the parking lot, went to the game and left. When we took Trey up on an unofficial visit the summer before his senior year, I was blown away with how beautiful that campus is and just how pretty the surroundings were.”
The Del Grecos’ time spent in Nashville made them familiar with the city and the city became familiar with the Del Greco name. Even nine years after Del Greco made his last field goal for the Titans, the name remains well known throughout the city. That familiarity is something Trey quickly realized upon his arrival at Vanderbilt.
“I’ve gotten it in the airport a couple of times, and I’ll run into it every once in a while where people will ask me if I’m related,” Trey said. “The guys on the team ask me about it and whether it bothers me. It doesn’t really bother me. I feel like I’m at a point in my life now where I’ve gotten that my whole life and now I’d rather get the `Hey you’re Trey Del Greco’ instead of `hey, you are this guy’s son.’ I’d like to make my own name around here.”
So far, Trey has done just that. Although he is the team’s lone freshman, he has been a significant contributor in Vanderbilt’s lineup throughout the season with his best finish coming at the Coca-Cola Duke Invitational in October where he tied for 11th.
Trey has made an impact on the golf course, but he could just as well be making an impact on the football field. For many years he believed the only sport he would be playing in college would be football much like his dad did at Auburn.
“I had (my dad) as a coach just about any day I needed him to,” Trey said of his kicking career. “He was out there at practice with me every day, and he could relive what he lived vicariously through me.”
Everything was falling into place for Trey to continue his kicking career in college through his first two years at Spain Park High School in Birmingham, Ala., where Trey played football and golf through his sophomore year. He earned All-City honors as a kicker and won the Class 6A Individual State Championship as a sophomore, but everything changed following that year.
“I was fortunate to have a pretty good golf season my sophomore year of high school and I enjoyed golf more, but I just didn’t think that I had a chance to go to college,” Trey said.
Trey’s stardom on the links made him rethink what he’d like to do in college and ultimately led him to his decision to give up football his junior year to focus on golf. His decision came as a shock to a lot of people, including himself.
“That was actually a shock to a lot of people that I didn’t go to Auburn,” Trey said. “Up until my sophomore year, I had planned on doing exactly that and going to Auburn and playing football. Just with him kicking in the past there and me being a kicker in high school, I figured I had a chance to follow his path.”
The decision to give up football was a tough one to make, but it was even more difficult to tell his dad.
“I was real nervous the day I told him I wasn’t going to play, because giving it up junior year kind of settled that I wasn’t going to play in college,” Trey said. “I was really nervous to tell him, but he was happy for me. He completely supported me, and he actually said it was a very smart decision so I was very thankful for him in that respect.”
Seeing his son quit the game he made a career of was especially tough for Al to swallow.
“I was disappointed basically just because I would have liked to have seen how good he could have become,” Al said. “At that time, as a junior in high school, he was much better than I was. Whether he would have developed strengthwise and continued to do that, I don’t know, but just the thought of not having that opportunity kind of threw me a little bit.”
The decision came as a surprise to Al, but the dedication Trey showed to golf from that point forward was unlike anything Al had seen from him before.
“I pretty much knew that golf was Trey’s baby and supported his decision,” Al said. “It wasn’t just because it was to get out of football to goof around and just be a regular student and play golf here and there, he actually worked his tail off every single day during that fall.”
With his father’s blessing, Trey focused completely on golf his junior year, which enabled him to earn his scholarship to Vanderbilt.
“Up until sophomore year, golf was just a hobby of mine,” Trey said. “I worked really hard for about a year and got my scholarship here all settled, so I decided to go back and help the football team my senior year.”
Instead of playing defensive back and wide receiver in addition to his kicking duties like he did his freshman and sophomore year, Trey was purely a kicker.
“I told the coaches that I’d kick, but I can’t stay at practice all day, so they let me come for the first 30 and 45 minutes and let me do what I needed to do,” Trey said. “They actually restructured practice to do kicking at the beginning. I would do that and then I would go practice golf the rest of the afternoon.”
Like football, Trey learned the game of golf from his father, who also made a name for himself on the golf course with his play at the annual American Century Championship in Lake Tahoe. The tournament, which is held each July, pits top celebrities in sports and entertainment against each other. Al has earned 10 top-10 finishes at the event and won it in 2000. His success on the links eventually helped land him a job as the golf coach at Spain Park, where he coached Trey all four years.
“In those tournaments he used to play in, I would go with and I was always that little kid on the range hitting balls with a driver that was taller than me,” Trey said. “He kind of got me into it.”
Trey is following in his father’s footsteps in more ways than one as a Division I athlete in a city where his father is beloved, it just isn’t happening in the sport most people, including himself, had expected.
