Yosuke Sugano is always reaching for new heights.

“There is football in Japan. But it’s not a huge sport like America,” said Sugano, a redshirt senior linebacker for Syracuse.

His love for the sport started when he joined his junior high school football club in Japan. And it became his passion when he traveled to AT&T Stadium to play in the International Bowl for the Japan under-18 national team.

“At that time, I was like ‘Oh, I want to play football in America,’ ” he said. “So I applied to an American high school for my senior year.”

Sugano was hooked and wanted to see what football in the United States was all about. He landed at Greenville Senior High School in Pennsylvania.

“When I was 18 years old, I came here all by myself, and at that time, wasn’t able to speak English at all, so I was kind of being lonely,” Sugano said.

But on the football field, he let his game do all the talking. Sugano tallied 62 tackles, 10 sacks and two forced fumbles in his one season of high school football in the U.S.

His performance earned him an opportunity to play Division I FCS football at Saint Francis University. In three seasons with the Red Flash, Sugano had 34 tackles, four sacks and a forced fumble.

“I think size difference is a huge difference for me, and even strategy-wise, football is much smarter than football in Japan,” Sugano said.

However, he was hungry for a bigger challenge. So Sugano entered the transfer portal, and that’s when former Orange defensive coordinator Tony White reached out.

“[White] had an experience of playing in Japan for like one bowl game,” Sugano said. “He coached in Japan one time, so he kind of has an understanding of how [the] Japanese act like.”

Sugano decided a “Power Five” conference school like Syracuse is exactly what he was looking for. He appeared in one game during his redshirt junior year.

But now in his redshirt senior year, he’s getting a lot of more reps and is hoping to be more involved this season in Rocky Long’s defense.

“I just want to show what I can do to coaches, because they have brand new coaches on all defensive stuff,” Sugano said. “So I’m trying my best to get the reps as much as I can.”

As he prepared for his final year of college football, Sugano is already thinking about professional football. He’s hoping to stay in North America to earn an opportunity to play at the next level via a global football program.