Schaumburg - Live, Work, Play - November/December 2008 - (Page 17) In high school, coach (Mark) Steger and coach (Tom) Cerasani were huge in getting me to become a better football player. Cerasani was great about getting in the weight room. Coach Steger, he was just one of those guys that was a tough coach. If you did something wrong, he was going to let you hear about it. But I would prefer that coach over someone that doesn’t yell because you know he cares and he’s trying to help you get better. (Cerasani was Schaumburg’s head coach while Steger was the team’s offensive coordinator). And Coach Cerasani, he was good about making sure I stayed out of trouble. They were both really good mentors. They helped me through the process of becoming a good quarterback, helping me make a decision on college, getting me prepared to play at Illinois. So I think when I got here, I think I was a little bit ahead of some other people coming out of high school from being with them through my high school years. Q: Where did you hang out growing up? As young kids, we played a lot on Ash Court. We played ball there, but once we got too big for that, we’d go to Aldrin. A couple friends had parks near their house, so we’d go there. You know, once you could hit the ball out of (Ash) Court, you needed to move to a bigger pasture. A: Q: Were these the kind of A: knockdown, drag-out games where guys are fighting every five minutes? Unfortunately, yeah. Especially summer baseball games. Usually they didn’t end after seven or nine innings - they ended with someone getting into a fight. We played a lot of basketball, too. Those usually didn’t end in fights, but they were really competitive. • photo by george leclaire/schaumburg magazine november/december 2008 Page 17 http://www.McCormickandschmicks.com/Chicago http://www.McCormickandschmicks.com/Chicago
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