Long commutes pay off for Romero
One of the biggest challenge facing scholarship athletes is mastering the time management skills required to be a successful student and athlete.
That likely won’t be a problem for Romero Nicolazzo, a Grade 12 student at Blessed Trinity, who signed Wednesday to play soccer at NCAA Division 1 Canisius.
Since last January, the 17-year-old Beamsville resident has been commuting five days a week to Rochester, N.Y., to train with the MLS Next Academy. He leaves after school at 3 o’clock and doesn’t get home until around midnight.
“It will be like a break,” he said.
There was a simple motivator for that crazy schedule.
“Canisius did it. I wanted very badly to go to a D1 university and I always had my mind on Canisius.”
Nicolazzo first made contact with Canisius this past season when a coach came up to him after a practice in Rochester.
“He told me that he wanted to get on a call with me over the summer and for me to come to a visit at his school,” he said. “I got on a call with the coach, Michael Tanke, and we had a nice conversation for about 40 minutes. He asked me to come for an official visit at the end of August.”
After the visit, Tanke sent him and offer which Nicolazzo made official by signing it Wednesday.
“At the start, I had my mind on any university because I wanted to go Division 1 but as the months went along I did more research. I thought about Niagara, Albany and Dayton and Canisius,” said Nicolazzo, who also received an offer from Brock University.
The official visit at Canisius cemented his interest in the Buffalo university.
“As soon as I saw it, I wanted to go there. I liked the atmosphere, how everyone was so close and every other team went to the other sports games, and I liked that it is a smaller school. The school has a population of 3,000 and has smaller class sizes. I like both the head coach and the assistant coach and the team was very welcoming.”
He wants to be an orthodontist and he will be taking a program that takes him towards that goal.
He plans to continue working hard until he heads to Canisius next fall.
“I am going to keep playing in Rochester five days a week and train every day on the off days. I don’t usually train Friday because we have two games on the weekend.”
He can’t wait to get started on the next phase of his soccer career.
“I am really looking forward to playing. I want to be a freshman starter and I would like to score some goals for Canisius and make an impact,” the left winger said. “It will take a lot of hard work and dedication and I have to impress the coaches obviously in preseason when I get there.”
Nicolazzo started playing soccer in Saltfleet when he was four with his father, Frank, as the coach. He then moved to Global Premier Soccer where he continued to be coached by his father until joining teams in Hamilton and then Rochester.
His father is a big part of his soccer career.
“He has always pushed me to work hard and he never let me give up even when I didn’t want to go practise in the basement or somewhere else. He is always trying to make me the best that I can be.”
