Derek Ng didn’t always know he wanted to go into football.

Ng’s sister played soccer, and he followed in her footsteps originally. In high school, though, he realized his chances to make it in college or professionally would be low.

“Only the top two percent of soccer players would go to college on scholarship,” Ng said. “I took a reality check.”

Ng looked at other options. He knew the football program at his high school, Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas, was good and that a lot of the players were watched by colleges.

“I never really thought of it as an option,” Ng said. “I played my freshman year. I didn’t do great. I didn’t do bad.”

In January 2015, after his team won the state title, Ng started to visit a kicking coach. The coach told him he was a natural and had a shot at “being great,” Ng said. But when Ng tried out, he was turned down for being “too small.”

“This drove me again to say ‘Hey I think I’m pretty good at this. I think I have a good shot,’” Ng said. “I didn’t know how I was compared to the other kids, but I knew I was pretty good for where I was at.”

After a week of spring ball on JV, the coach went to the varsity coach to tell him to watch Ng. The varsity coach made Ng kick ten balls at different lengths. He made them all. 

“He looked at me and he said ‘No, you’re going to be playing with varsity now,’” Ng said. “It was a surreal moment because all of these dudes that I watched on TV or had seen in class and didn’t talk to because they were big time, they were all in front of me.”

That sophomore year, Ng said, he started to recognize that he could take his football career somewhere. His first game on varsity, actually, was on ESPN.

He was named to first team All-Southwest Region as a senior, after being a second team selection in both his sophomore and junior years. Ng was also an integral part to leading his team to three straight state championships, recording 139 touchbacks on 330 kickoffs and making 230 of 242 extra points during his high school career.

Ng, who is now a senior at the College of the Holy Cross, was named first team all-patriot league for the 2020 season. He was named Patriot League Special Teams Player of the Week September 17, 2018; September 9, 2019; and March 15, 2021. 

As a junior, Ng was perfect 10-for-10 on extra points, and he made six field goals throughout the season. He made a pair of field goals, in fact, that broke school records with a 51-yard field goal against Lehigh on March 13.

“All of the awards and honors of each week are great, but, at the end of the day, this is a team sport,” Ng said. “My individual awards don’t win us games. My work on the field wins us games.”

Ng, who is majoring in sociology, recognized that the awards are an “ego shot,” as he called it, but that he shouldn’t allow it to get to his head because that will then make the team and himself become lax. He said that while the team may be named No. 1 for pre-season they still have to bring it each game.

“We’re super excited to have an 11 game season,” Ng said. “It means a lot where we have our schedule and it’s guaranteed.”

Most recently, Ng was honored as Patriot League GEICO Football Player of the Week September 20, 2021. The placekicker received the award after making the game-winning field goal in Holy Cross’s victory over Yale. The 47-year field goal was kicked with only 48 seconds left in the game, and it was the second time that Ng connected on the game-winner against Yale. Holy Cross won 20-17.