By Malcolm Wilson-Toliver
From a young age, Nolan Izzo was a soccer player. He loved the feeling it gave him since he was a kindergartener. But, at that age, he was awful. He couldn’t play at all with other kids, but he never gave up on his favorite sport. He eventually got better after playing almost every day for years and quickly shot up the ranks. By eighth grade, he was the best player on his club team and was poised to have a breakout season, but then he fractured his right L5 Vertebrae in his spine. He couldn’t move without a back brace to hold him up. He was devastated but worked as hard as he possibly could in order to work his way back. “It felt like countless hours of painful physical therapy, but I only had a comeback in my mind.”
He worked, sweated, clawed, and grabbed his way back into his sport with his eyes solely on his goal. Nolan did so well in therapy that he got back earlier than expected. Nolan moved faster than he had before. His kicks were stronger, and his mind was sharper. He felt almost better than when he had begun. He got back to work on the field his freshman year, playing for the junior varsity team at Fairfield- Ludlowe in Connecticut. “I felt like I was the best point in my career, before the injury took it away from me.” Nolan had gotten on the field and played well, his ability really starting to blossom into the star he was set to become. This was his first game back, and it felt like he hadn’t skipped a beat.
During the game, he was tripped while running up the sideline and heard a crack. This time he refused to come out of the game. He played the rest of the game with immense pain shooting up his spine. He left the game, went home, and could barely sleep. For the entirety of the next week, Nolan rested, not being able to run with his team due to the pain. Even so, everyone thought that he could play the next game with no issue. As soon as he took his first step in a full sprint, Nolan could barely move. It caused him to fall in the middle of the pitch face first with a hand on his back within the first ten minutes. He had to be helped off and eventually sent to the hospital. He couldn’t believe it. It was the second time in just under a year that he fractured the same part of his spine in the same exact place. This time he knew his playing career was over. He would never be the same. He took his physical therapy seriously and did what he needed to do in order to be healthy again, but this time he took a detour to another sport.
Nolan began talking to Fairfield-Ludlowe’s football coach, Mitch Ross. Nolan realized that kicker was a lot less physically demanding than other positions and really only required concentration, accuracy, and leg power. It came almost naturally to him. His kicks were smooth, and the goal was a lot larger than in soccer.
He began to work. It was a process to learn the mechanics from the beginning. He understood that the regular football cleats weren’t going to be able to give him the right accuracy to make kicks. He brought his old soccer cleats to feel comfortable enough to take meaningful kicks in. “I was the starting kicker and punter, and I did pretty well for my first year.” “Well” was an understatement. Nolan broke multiple school records in his one-year tenure as a kicker. During his senior year, he began to garner the eyes of colleges throughout the Northeast and beyond. These were schools like Salve Regina, Endicott, Southern Connecticut State University, Saint Anselm, Assumption College, and Western New England University.
“The football team that had the best culture was WNE. I loved the campus and culture. Immediately, I was offered a chance to start, and I knew that’s all I needed.”
He never believed he would be in college for kicking footballs, but here he was, walking into his first football summer camp at Western New England University.
The days were hot and long. The sun beat down on the players as they noticed that the transition from high school to college was nothing to be laughed at. Coaches want you in top shape. As an incoming freshman, Nolan met others like himself to keep himself. They kept each other from giving up, pushed each other every day to the limit, and fought for the next man. This camaraderie gave him the mental fortitude to perform up to his best at every practice. The mentorship from starting kicker Matthew Gilbert also helped. It was Gilbert getting injured, however, that gave Nolan his first start.
Before that game, listening to Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones, Part II,” Nolan focused intensely. He came in for kickoffs. His bread and butter were kicks like this. The game was against Salve Regina, a school that had recruited him merely months before. He kicked a bomb. That ball landed within the ten-yard line, giving Western New England an amazing field position. “I trace my soccer beginnings to my future success as a football kicker. It truly helped me.”
