CENTREVILLE — Round in shape with white and black patches, a soccer ball looks nothing like a football. The brown color of the pigskin, along with the oval nature of the ball, does not lend itself to kicking along the ground down a field.

These distinctions don’t matter, though, for Nathaniel Gration, the Centreville Academy football team’s kicker.

Gration, 18, a native of Melbourne, Australia, has been playing soccer since he was 5, when he was doing missionary work with his parents on the Solomon Islands.

But when he moved to Clinton, La., and began his senior year of high school at Centreville, there was no soccer team. Instead, there was American football.

“It started in Academy (Sports and Outdoors) in Baton Rouge,” Gration said. “I met one of the football players from here, and I was just telling him I was looking for some soccer stuff because I played soccer all my life. He said, ‘Well, in football you kick soccer-style sometimes if you want.’ That got me interested because I just love kicking.”

So on the first day of school, Gration headed out to practice despite never even watching, much less playing, a football game. He kicked a few times and made the team.

Gration has now made 29-of-34 extra point attempts, and he said he can kick a 40- to 50-yard field goal.

He even kicked off once in last week’s game against Wilkinson County Christian Academy.

He kicked it to the 10 (-yard line),” said head coach Bill Hurst. “He had good height on it and everything. He even went down there and got a hit. I never dreamed he would get a hit. He was down at about the 25-or 20-yard line when he made contact, and he was excited, he really was.”

But Gration’s story is even more interesting than the transition of sports.

Gration has visited seven different countries as part of his parents’ mission work for the United Pentecostal Church, and he’s spent much of his life in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, north of Australia.

He moved from Australia to the Islands, where he lived for five years, when he was 2, before moving back down under. Then at 12, his family took over missionary work in Papua New Guinea.

“We live about four or five years in the country that we’re missionaries to, but we’re supported by churches here in America,” Gration said. “Every four or five years we have to come back and visit churches in America and raise our support back up.”

The Grations are supported by the American United Pentecostal Church because there is a bigger base in the states than in Australia, although that is where their support came from during their time in the Solomon Islands.

While his family is in the U.S., Gration has attended schools — he was home-schooled while overseas. He was in Hazelwood, Mo., the past two years ago and traveled with his parents last year.

“Last year I did Internet schooling, and we wanted me to graduate from an actual school,” he said. “So we knew people down here that were willing to let me stay with them. While they’re traveling around, it’s good that I can have one place that I can stay and basically call home for a year or so.”

Gration is staying with the family of Rev. Jerry Jones of First United Pentecostal Church in Clinton, La., about 25 minutes from Centreville, while his family travels the country raising money for their missionary work.

They are currently in Indiana, but they visited him in Mississippi a couple weeks ago and got to attend one of his games.

They will see him again for Christmas and in March before coming back for his graduation in May.

“It’s not easy, but when he’s doing grade 12 you just can’t mess around,” said his mother, Robyn Gration. “It is better that he’s there rather than trying to do school on the road.

“I’m pretty bigheaded about my son. I think he kicked five times and made five goals (when I saw him play).”

Neither Gration nor his parents knew anything about football when he first started playing, but Robyn said she was not surprised he went out for the team.

She said he played every sport he could while in the mission-based school in Papua New Guinea.

Now, she said, she’s learning the basics of this new game at the same time as her son, who said he is picking it up “slowly but surely.”

Hurst said despite being a kicker, Gration has never hesitated to work just as hard as the other players.

“He does all the running, he runs all the sprints, he pushes the sled. He does everything that we do as far as practice,” Hurst said. “A lot of times kickers want to come out and just kick, not do any running or any work. He has never shied away.”

The sled, Gration said, was one of the biggest adjustments in practice. While he’s used to doing a lot of running in soccer, he never had to push anything at the same time.

The other adjustment? Wearing pads.

“It was a shock the first time I put them on,” he said. “I remember I couldn’t believe I could even fit in them.”

Surprisingly, the language barrier was not a big adjustment.

Gration said he only spent a short time explaining to everyone where he was from and trying to be understood, and now he thinks he might have even picked up some of that Southern drawl.

“At first I had to really listen to him, but I think he’s gotten more like us now,” Hurst said. “His pitch has changed also. It was different to start with him, but now I think I understand him a little better than he understands me.”

Gration’s teammates quickly warmed up to him as well, partially, Hurst said, because of his good attitude.

Gration said his friends think his story is pretty cool, and he’s even been incorporated into some team rituals.

“I love history, and on Thursday’s the seniors have to say a speech, and they always ask me to say something inspirational from history,” he said.

Gration is in America instead of Australia so his parents can visit him more often. Plus, the only family still down under are his newly-married older brother, Jason, 24, and an aunt who is taking care of his elderly grandmother.

“The people he’s living with are just precious friends,” Robyn said of his guardians. “They’ve done what I would say family would be hard-pressed to do. And I think it’s been good exposure.”

Gration, who loves to travel but said he enjoys small-town life, said the biggest adjustment from Papua New Guinea to the U.S. has been the conveniences like cooking.

He misses the public transportation of Melbourne, though, because he cannot drive in America.

“You can’t just go anywhere you want at any time,” Gration said of the missionary life. “You just have to be careful because you’re an outsider in those third world countries. You just have to be careful what you do and when you do it.

“One thing Papua New Guineans do have is a respect for missionaries and a respect for the church. The ones who don’t have that respect generally get looked down upon.”

After Gration graduates, he said he expects to travel with his parents and 10-year-old sister before moving back to Papua New Guinea with them in September.

He wants to be a missionary, although college in the U.S. is not out of the question.

“If the doors opened for a scholarship or something through academic work or sports then I’d step through the doors,” he said. “Some of the guys on the team reckon I could (kick in college). I don’t even know how to go about that.”

Gration’s mother says it is all up to God’s will.

“We have our own personal preferences, but we have prayed about it and placed it in God’s hands,” she said. “If the doors open for him to go to college, we will take it, but we haven’t had him for the last two years. I’m not really ready to say goodbye permanently and to have him on the other side of the world.”

Still if that’s the case, Gration said attending school away from his parents has been training for when he’s on his own.

Either way, he wants to stay in sports.

“When I go back I’m looking for an under-19 or under-21 team to join because it’s something I love to do,” he said. “If I go back to Papua New Guinea, I may coach a Bible school soccer team.”