Knights add new commitment

National Signing Day is fast approaching, and a late addition to the group of UCF commitments expected to sign on Wednesday is Fort Myers-Estero Kicker/Punter Matt Prater. The Golden Knights recently offered Prater a scholarship, and he accepted.

"It's in-state. That's a big reason," Prater said of his reason to commit to the Knights. "They also offered me a full scholarship."

Many schools recruited Matt, but as it often goes with kickers those schools may or may not end up offering. Ohio State heavily recruited Prater for a while, but they gave a scholarship to one of their kickers currently on the roster. He did have one more offer though.

"A lot of schools talked to me but they wanted me to walk on," Prater said. "New Mexico State offered me a full ride."

Prater had an excellent season at Estero High School, earning a spot on the Class 4A All-State second team as a punter, and the FloridaKids.net All-Gridiron Dream Team as a kicker. He was 15-of-19 on field goals, including a school-record 49 yarder, and nailed 56 of 58 extra points. 50 of his 66 kickoffs went for touchbacks. Prater had a 41 yard punt average, including punts of 68 and 70 yards during the season. Estero High had another successful season, although they fell short in the state playoffs.

"We lost to St. Thomas in the quarterfinals of the state playoffs," Prater said. "We shoud have won too. They beat us 21 to 17."

As far as his future at UCF, coaches have told Matt they would like for him to handle kickoff and field goal duties in addition to being a backup punter. By all indication it appears he has excellent chance to play right away, given the graduation of Javier Beorlegui.

"They said, 'We open up with Penn State and we want you to do the opening kickoff,' so I think they want me to start as a true freshman," Prater said.

Like many other football kickers Matt got his start playing soccer, and he practiced often with some of the best kickers to come out of Florida in recent years, the three Grammatica brothers.

"We played soccer and my dad coached Santiago Grammatica who now goes to USF, "he said. "His brothers Martin and Bill started kicking and they got us into it. We used to go out to his farm to kick field goals and play soccer once or twice a month."