The most effective place kicker at South Main in quite a while, Enoch Gota is our 2025 Rice Football Special Teams Player of the Year.
Field goals have been an adventure around South Main for several years and the Owls haven’t had a truly dependable kicker in almost half a decade. With so many moving parts entering the 2025 season on offense, having someone who could reliably put it through the pipes became that much more important. Enoch Gota stepped in to be that answer.
Gota served as the primary kickoff specialist for Rice football over the 2023 and 2024 seasons, and while he performed well in that role, he was never able to fully unseat Tim Horn, who transferred into the program from Washington, although he came close. Horn’s struggles last season opened the door for Gota, who made 5-of-8 kicks before the team reverted back to Horn.
More: 2025 Rice Football Season Superlatives
When Horn’s eligibility expired this past offseason, Rice football brought in former UTSA kicker Chase Allen to compete for the job. Gota beat him out in fall camp and was the Owls’ opening day field goal specialist for the first time.
To box score scouts, Gota’s first year as the starter got off to a rocky start. He did not attempt a field goal in the season opener against Louisiana, but converted a 42-yard attempt against Houston. Then he proceeded to miss three of his next six attempts, completing the first half of the season with 4-of-7 from the field with a perfect 14-for-14 mark on extra points.
Gota wasn’t inaccurate, though. He just did not possess the bionic legs that some of today’s NFL kickers have flashed. Gota’s three misses came from 54 yards (against PVAMU), 55 yards (against Charlotte) and 47 yards (against FAU). The ball generally flew in the right direction but came up short on those longer kicks.
The staff wasn’t fooled by the modest conversion rate in the early weeks and stuck with Gota despite those misses. He rewarded the Owls by making every attempt from that point onward, finishing the season 10-for-13 (76.9 percent) on field goal tries and 27-of-27 on extra points. On kicks from 49 yards or shorter, Gota converted 10-of-11.
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Even with the misses from deep, Gota posted the most successful season from a Rice place kicker since Chris Barnes knocked through 8-of-10 attempts in 2019. No kicker since then had been better than 75 percent, with many delivering extremely underwhelming seasons to the point where the Owls often opted to go for it on fourth down rather than put the game on the foot of their specialists.
By season’s end, Gota was the team’s leading scorer, the first time a specialist earned that designation since Christian VanSickle in 2022. Gota’s only limiting factor was the inefficiency of the offense, which limited his opportunities to add to his stats. As a result, his stellar season flew under the radar somewhat, but his impact on the Owls’ success was not missed by those on South Main.
** Photo credit: Maria Lysaker **
