Special Teams 'Freak' Excelling in Multiple Roles

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — On The Athletic’s annual Freaks List for college football, the 100 players ranked this year include 22 defensive linemen, 19 wide receivers, 16 offensive linemen, 13 linebackers, 12 running backs, nine tight ends, six defensive backs and two quarterbacks.

There’s also one kicking specialist. Coming in at No. 90 in the rankings is Daniel Sparks, a 6-foot-6, 214-pound graduate student who punts, kicks off, and holds on extra points and field goals for the Virginia Cavaliers.

“He has a lot of gifts and intangibles that you can’t coach and you can’t teach,” said Drew Meyer, UVA’s analyst for special teams. “He’s very athletic. He’s super flexible. It’s fun. All the guys were messing with him for the first week of camp [last month] and calling him the Freak.”

The Athletic put UVA linebacker Kam Robinson at No. 51 on its Freaks List. In its evaluation of Sparks, the online publication noted that during the offseason “he broad jumped 10-5 ½ and vertical jumped 33 1/2 inches. Only four DBs at this year’s [NFL] combine ran faster than his 4.25-second shuttle time.”

Asked about the article after a practice this week, Sparks smiled. The other Cavaliers “always bust me about that,” he said. “They always mess with me and say how we need to run fakes and all that stuff.”

Virginia (1-1) hosts William & Mary (1-1) at noon Saturday. It’s the annual UVA Strong Day at Scott Stadium, where the memories of Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler and D’Sean Perry will be honored.

Sparks is from Gadsden, Ala., about 65 miles northeast of Birmingham. He started college in 2020 at Louisiana Monroe, where he won a starting job as a freshman and averaged 44.6 yards per punt. The Warhawks finished 0-10 that season, however, after which their coaching staff was dismissed, and Sparks transferred to the University of Minnesota at the end of the fall semester.

He never punted for the Golden Gophers. Sparks lost his battle for the starting job at that position, and at the end of spring practice in 2022 he entered the transfer portal again. This time he landed at UVA, as a preferred walk-on.

Sparks arrived in Charlottesville unsure what to expect. “I just kind of thought, ‘OK, this is my new place for football,’ ” he recalled this week. “But then it became [much more than that].”

He’s been on scholarship since the spring of 2023, he’s earned two degrees from the University (a bachelor’s in biology and a master’s in higher education), and he’s gotten engaged.

Sparks met Abbey Foley in a biostatistics class on Grounds. He and Foley, a graduate student in the UVA School of Nursing, will be married next May.

“This has been great,” Sparks said of his experience at UVA. “Obviously, the weather’s great, and you have all the good food, all the good nature stuff. It’s just overall great. I love it.”

He’s become an integral part of head coach Tony Elliott’s program. In 2022, Sparks averaged 45.9 yards per punt and was named to the All-ACC second team. His average dipped to 42.9 yards per punt in 2023, but he raised it to 44.6 last season, when 14 of his punts were downed inside the 20-yard line.

The 2024 season was his first with multiple roles as a Cavalier. Sparks took over as the primary holder on extra points and field goals and began kicking off last year. Of Virginia’s 58 kickoffs in 2023, only 20 had gone for touchbacks, and Sparks improved the team’s performance in that phase of the game, totaling 32 touchbacks on his 54 kickoffs last year.

Two games into this season, he’s kicking even better. Of Sparks’ 14 kickoffs, 13 have produced touchbacks.

“I think I’m just kicking the ball better,” Sparks said.

“He was overswinging last year,” Meyer said.

Sparks hurt his shoulder against Louisville last October, an injury that he played through but required offseason surgery. That limited his participation in spring practice, and he focused on building up his lower body.

That work is paying dividends this season. “I think I got a lot stronger,” said Sparks, who’s averaging 46 yards per punt, with a long of 57.

“I think he’s performing at an extremely high level right now,” Elliott said, “considering what we’re asking him to do, doing double duty.”

No. 38’s prowess on kickoffs can be a little frustrating for the Cavaliers’ coverage team, which assistant coach Mike Adams oversees.

“The guys are disappointed when he hits a touchback,” Meyer said, “because they want to go try to make a tackle. Which is a good issue to have with a group of guys that you have to kind of pull back, that are hungry to go make plays. But at the same time, Sparks is doing a heck of a job for us.

“We tell him, ‘Swing away, bang it through the back of the end zone, swing easy and make clean contact.’ And then if he mishits one, we feel great about our ability to go down the ball. Those guys are motivated, and Mike has done a great job with that unit and the culture there. So the guys are really bought in and want to be on it, and they’re playing hard.”

Sparks loves the fact that he stays busy during games. “It’s really nice,” he said. “It also takes some of the nerves away, the more field time you get.”

In Virginia’s game against NC State last weekend, Sparks didn’t punt until the second quarter. But he kicked off twice in the first quarter, each time after a Cavalier touchdown, and held for kicker Will Bettridge on two extra points.

“It’s hard to be locked in the whole time when you’re going for three-and-a-half hours and you might have four reps,” said Meyer, who was an All-Big Ten punter at Wisconsin. “However, when you’re holding, when you’re kicking off, it keeps you in the flow of the game, it keeps you in rhythm.”

Sparks, who turned 23 in July, is studying cybersecurity management in UVA’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. Eventually, he might pursue a career in medical sales, but he’d like to play in the NFL first. The more he shows he can do at UVA, he believes, the more attractive he’ll be to NFL teams.

“I know I’m not probably going to kick field goals here,” Sparks said, “but I always try to mess around and feel like I can hit them. Then one day I could be the emergency guy.”

In voting among UVA’s players, Sparks was named a team captain in 2022, ’23 and again in ’24. In each of those years, the ballots were cast after the season concluded. Elliott said the players will vote after the eighth game this fall, and the results will determine the Cavaliers’ captains for 2025.

“And from there on out, those individuals will actually wear the C on their jersey as permanent team captains,” Elliott said, “as opposed to getting the jersey at the end of the season with the C on it in a frame.”

Elliott doesn’t have a vote, but he’s noted that Sparks has “been present every day. He’s had a great attitude. He works extremely hard. He performs, and he’s earned the respect of not just the guys in the specialist room, but everybody on the team.”

From the time Sparks arrived at UVA, his teammates “respected his ability as an athlete,” Meyer said. “But I think the longer he’s been here, the more guys have gotten to learn about who he is and how he lives his life and how he treats people and the way he leads. And I’m pushing him to continue to grow and to be more of a leader and more outspoken amongst the team, because obviously he’s earned their respect over these last couple of years.”

Meyer’s message to Sparks: “You don’t have to be just a specialist. You can be a leader on the team. You don’t have to be just a leader in our room. You can be a leader amongst all the guys.”

Of being named a team captain thrice, Sparks said: “That’s obviously one of the highest honors you can get. It makes me feel like I’m doing a decent job, at least. It really means the world to me, especially coming from my teammates.”

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