Diego De La Cruz started playing football at eight years old, but his first experience didn't go as expected.

"I wanted to quit," De La Cruz recounted of his early days playing the sport. "And I told my dad, you know what, I don't like this, I want to go back to soccer, and he said okay, you go tell the coach."

That's when his coach told him the great potential he had. The goal was to play at the college level, and the first step was making his way to Brownsville.

"We're so lucky," St. Joseph Academy head football coach Tino Villarreal, De La Cruz's current coach, said of the star lineman. "Not every day in the Rio Grande Valley do we get a 6'5, 330-pound offensive lineman who's charismatic, who's a leader on and off the field, who works his tail off in the offseason."

"When I got here everything was new," De La Cruz said. "From the way you prepare for games, the practice, the two-a-day schedule. I got here and said what is this? I hadn't done anything like that ever."

On April 2nd, 2024 he received the call from UTEP offering a full ride scholarship to play Division I football. 

"It was great. It's a dream come true because that's why I made a lot of sacrifices and that's what I worked for," De La Cruz said. "Finally getting to accomplish it, I made it but let's keep working."

"He came in here with a dream and he knew what it was going to take to accomplish and we're just happy he wears a bloodhound jersey." Villarreal added.

Fast forward to October, De La Cruz had his first official visit. 

"It was special," De La Cruz emotionally said of his goals of becoming a college football star were finally being realized. "Just seeing my parents and my sister enjoying the dream that we're all living. It's something that as a Mexican kid you don't really see your future, you don't imagine it and once you get there it's like a movie. Wow this is really happening, this is actually my reality."