GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- Florida football's locker room is filled with plaques of current alumni playing in the NFL.

One of those players is Caleb Sturgis.

"I look at it every time," said current Florida place kicker Evan McPherson about the former Gator kicker. "Thats where I want to end up."

McPherson's competitive drive is not something new, especially growing up in a household with two brothers.

"Everything is a competition," joked Evan's mother, Amber McPherson.

Whether it be chores or sports, the McPherson clan just wanted to one up each other and that quickly translated in Evan following in his older brother's footsteps.

"Logan McPherson, he was a punter at Louisiana Tech," said LaDon McPherson, Evan's father. "Evan saw how he groomed himself into that role so Evan started working on his own to match his brother."

"It was a little brother trying to be like big brother. No matter what it was," added Amber McPherson. "If it was football, soccer, basketball, if he saw Logan doing it, he wanted to do it. He fell in love with kicking as soon as Logan started."

"Whenever he started. I thought it was really cool and I wanted to be better than him," joked Evan McPherson. "Anything he did I wanted to be better in."

McPherson started his athletic career as a soccer player. He kept playing the sport through high school and even score the game-winning header to help Fort Payne lift the 6A state championship as a freshman.

But in the end soccer was not his passion. Place-kicking was.

"I thought, 'man that would be really cool being a kicker,'" said McPherson. "It's a fun position and to be on a football team."

"He absolutely loves it," said Amber McPherson. "He loves kicking the ball. He would be inside playing video games and he can't do it for long. He would just go, 'I just need to go outside and kick.' He is the one that tells me that I need to go to the field and kick."

The Florida freshman quickly went into action. His soccer goal posts in the backyard were converted to goal posts.

"He made himself a field goal," said his mother proudly. "He put some posts on the sides of his soccer goal so he can practice at home."

McPherson needed to practice because he needed to accomplish his first big goal.

"He was in fifth grade or sixth grade, he said he wanted to play in that Under Armour All-American game," recounted Amber McPherson. "He said, 'what do I need to do to play in that game.' I said, 'well for a kicker there are two spots, one for one side and one for the other, so you have to be one of the top two kickers in the nation to play in that game.'

And he was like, 'okay.'"

Okay.

To Evan McPherson it really is that simple because his mind was all made up and he had a plan.

"I felt like it was just the biggest game to play in and I always to play in those big games, in those big moments," he said.

He quickly set out to achieve his dream. According to his father, the younger McPherson watched countless hours of film, breaking down each kicker's technique.

"Try to get tidbits from that to make himself even better," said LaDon McPherson.

"Watch their style, their form. He would study every video that he could find," added his mother.

Evan even turned down opportunities to play for the Army All-America game. He had a goal and he was not going to fall short.

The McPherson family made the almost 800 mile trek to Wisconsin from Alabama to help Evan accomplish that goal last year. After beating several hundred kickers from around the country, McPherson made it to the final two spots. The winner would go on to secure a spot in the Under Armour game.

"The first one to miss two was out. He didn't miss. He got the first spot," said LaDon McPherson.

"It was one of the best moments of my life," said Evan McPherson.

'Wow. It was such a real moment to watch his dream come true," said Amber McPherson. "And because he pushed so hard to do that other doors opened."

Doors like earning a scholarship to play college football.

At 5-foot-11, 177 pounds, McPherson is one of the smallest members of Dan Mullen's first recruiting class at Florida. However, there is no question that the first year has probably had one of the biggest impact on the team.

"He's been a very steady guy right from training camp all the way through," said Mullen. "He's a guy that has confidence and is always ready to do his part to help us win. And I think that confidence builds from the people around him. He looks at the team, and I think it's how he works, how he prepares and how he's performed ... it's been a guy that the team has a lot of confidence in, in what he's been able to do."

"It was definitely crazy running on the field for the first time," said McPherson about his first time running through the tunnel at The Swamp. "I know everybody got a little quiet for that first kick, but after kickoff and it went through, everybody was cheering and I like that. So I just wanted to hear that every single time - everybody quiet and then everybody get loud."

It's understandable why some in Gator Nation were worried. McPherson was following Eddy Pineiro's footsteps - a kicker that not only had the best field goal percentage in the nation his final year (94.4%) but finished his career converting 88.4 percent of his field goal attempts, which ranks first in UF history.

But McPherson stepped up to the call.

The two-time SEC Freshman of the Week has only missed two field goals this year, although his 36-yard miss against Kentucky appeared to be good, but is not a reviewable play, and has been named a semi-finalist to the Lou Groza award.

"He's been really good," receiver Josh Hammond said. "A freshman coming in to be able to hit those kicks that he hits consistently throughout the year has been big for us."

"It's such a blessing," said Evan McPherson. "For coach Mullen to just give me the opportunity to succeed. I think it's just really cool. If I don't get the finalist this year, just got to come back next year and have a better year."

"Those things come in because he isn't focused on those things," said LaDon McPherson. "He just does what he needs to do and these things happen because of that"

"I know all eyes are on me, but I try to block it all out," added Evan. "I tell people that when I'm kicking a field goal I don't hear anything. Like in the distance I might hear some people in the distance chanting my name, and thats pretty cool, but in the end I just try to block everything out."

In the end, it all comes back to his goals.

All the outside noise does not impact that only what Evan does on the field can.

"I'm determined," he said. "I try to set goals for myself and I try to achieve all of them."

The SEC has had their fair share of great college kickers. At Florida Sturgis and more recently Pineiro set program records, while Auburn's Daniel Carlson finished his career with the Tigers as the all-time leading scorer in SEC football history.

Although McPherson looks up to these men, he is not following in anyone's footsteps except Evan McPherson's.

"I asked Evan this question, 'do you want to be the Daniel Carlson of Florida,'" Evan's father said. "He said, 'no, I want to be the Evan McPherson of the University of Florida."