Arizona football owns the lowest graduation rate among student athletes in the Pacific 10 Conference, but Wildcats junior kicker John Bonano is an exception. Bonano, a physiology major, owns the highest GPA in the Pac-10 (3.9) and earned first-team Pac-10 All-Academic honors on Wednesday. The Arizona Daily Wildcat caught up with Bonano to talk about owning the conference’s best GPA, his road to Arizona and his basketball skills.
Daily Wildcat: So what was your reaction to finding out you have the highest GPA among Pac-10 players?
John Bonano: It was pretty surprising, I hadn’t expected it or anything but it’s exciting to hear. My dad actually told me about it this morning, called me up. He was excited about it and then a couple of the coaches said congrats to me today, so it was cool.
DW: Are you the smartest guy on the team? Some people say (that it’s) David Roberts with his aerospace engineering major.
JB: He’s a different major than me, so maybe in different areas, but I mean I’ve got the highest GPA right now so I can hopefully keep it up.
DW: What’s your class schedule like?
JB: It’s pretty tough, I’m taking physics right now, Physiology 201 and then just a couple Gen eds, so I’ve got a tough schedule.
DW: So why did you ultimately decide to come to Arizona?
JB: The (full-ride) academic scholarship was ultimately it. Some other schools offered me the scholarship, but, out of all of them, I narrowed it down to Arizona. I wasn’t planning on playing a sport but I just decided to walk on here and it worked out for me.
DW: What other schools offered you the scholarship?
JB: Texas offered me it, Alabama, Florida, a bunch of other schools out east, and Arizona was closest to home (California). I was also thinking of going to some Division-III schools for basketball, but I ended up just making the money here.
DW: So did you kick in high school?
JB: I kicked, played basketball and did track, so I didn’t really focus on kicking until I decided to come here and walk on, and then I really started focusing on it.
DW: So what was your main sport in high school?
JB: Basketball mainly, I mean I played travel basketball, went to Vegas for tournaments and stuff. I was a power forward, slash wing, and just kind of kicked because no on else could do it. I knew at this level, at this school, kicking was probably the only thing I could do so I started focusing on that more my senior year, went to a couple camps and stuff.
DW: Did you ever think about trying to walk on the basketball team here?
JB: No, not here. The guys here are huge, 6-foot-8 at my position, so I just stuck to the kicking.
DW: What’s it like being a kicker, do you see any of the position players ever?
JB: Yeah, we see them around, we have special teams meetings, we’re all in there together. But obviously we hang out as a special teams unit, as the kickers on the sideline. We’re kind of our own little unit within the team.
