Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Jack Fitzsimmons: Life, Lessons and Lacrosse

  by Donato DiRenzo   
             Jack Fitzsimmons sits on a bench outside Newhouse as he talks about his passion for sports. When asked what his favorite sport to play was he instantly perks up “I kind of latched onto lacrosse. I started when I was in third grade.”  As a kid growing up in Virginia it should not come as a big surprise that he eventually gravitated towards lacrosse after playing various sports.
                Lacrosse has been a popular sport in the state for many years. A quick look at the University of Virginia Cavaliers lacrosse history shows this clearly as they have been in or won the NCAA Division 1 Championship 9 times since 1972. Of those 9 appearances, 5 came between 1994 and 2006. This was right in the time frame that Jack would have been growing up and in high school.
                After playing lacrosse in high school and rooting for the Cavalier’s growing up Jack would eventually go on to go to undergraduate school at U.V. and even got the opportunity to work on radio broadcasts for the lacrosse team. This had to have been a great accomplishment for Jack as he continues to pursue his dream of broadcasting sports for a living someday.
                Sports and specifically lacrosse were a big part of Jack’s life growing up and it would seem have been a great influence on him. Many of the values and work ethics instilled in him came from this part of his life. At this rate it will only be a matter of time before he is doing what he dreamed of doing as a young boy cheering on his Cavs in Virginia.


Interview with Jack Fitzsimmons

Transcript:


Jack Fitzsimmons: My name is Jack Fitzsimmons I am a Broadcast Digital Journalism major grad student. I am from Alexandria, Virginia, which is just outside D.C.
Donato DiRenzo: How did you first get involved in sports?
JF: My parents had me start off playing youth sports a lot as a kid. I played baseball, I played basketball, soccer, eventually started playing football and lacrosse when I got a little bit older. I think part of the reason why they always wanted me doing sports is because both of them, I wouldn't consider either a huge sports fan but their definitely casual sports fans and pay a lot of attention to it. My dad for example had pictures of myself as a little baby basically on Cape Cod with a Red Sox t-shirt and Red Sox hat on because my dad’s from New England. So that kind of shaped and pushed me towards sports.
DD: What was your favorite sport in high school or even younger?
JF: To play or watch
DD: To play
JF: Well I kind of latched onto lacrosse. I started playing when I was in third grade. I played every position for a couple of years and then eventually chose goalie in my position in high school. Part of the reason why I chose lacrosse was because a lot of the kids that I had been friends with growing up were also doing it. One of my best friends dad played at Notre Dame and he was coaching one of the little youth teams so he kind of recruited me to get into it. I kind of decided pretty early on lacrosse was something I figured I was decent enough at that I could play at the varsity high school level as opposed to other sports like football. At my school there was not a lot of opportunity for me to be a starter at any point. Basketball was out of the question. I kind of had chosen lacrosse as a little kid over baseball. So that’s kind of the sport I focused on most.
DD: Is there maybe a game or practice that you first realized 'wow I really like this' maybe you had an awesome game, ton of goals and really realized  this is the sport that I'm most interested in?
JF: Yeah it was probably when I was in sixth grade. We had always had 2 goalies on our youth travel team and one of the kids just decided 'screw this I’m sick of doing this and always getting hit with shots' they wanted someone to volunteer during practice to kind of step in and see if they could find another goalie and I was like 'screw it I'm not really adding a whole lot of value to the team playing midfield and attack and defense sort of rotating around so ill step in there' and that first practice I played, didn't give up a goal got hit a couple of times and it hurt a lot but it kind of felt like 'Ok heres something i can do that can definitely contribute to the team' and fill a need when other people didn't necessarily want to do it. You think about it, it’s kind of crazy to be stepping in front of people throwing a hard rubber object at you but that kind of stuck out to me as something I felt like I could help the team a lot and it seemed like a lot of fun to prevent guys from scoring and get them really frustrated which was always a lot of fun.
DD: Did you, you talked about a rubber ball flying at you at 90 or 100mph or whatever it is did you ever think you hear different stories about kids taking a shot right to the chest and dropping dead on the field. Did that ever cross your mind and how did you think about those kinds of chances standing in the goal
JF: I never really thought that much about the getting hit in the chest and hit at an irregular heartbeat rhythm I mean I knew about the whole George Boiardi thing at Cornell but he was a defensemen wearing cut down shoulder pads and I felt as a goalie I was generally pretty safe having the big chest protector. In terms of getting hit in the neck or something there was a couple of times I would get hit in the face and that’s kind of like a 'Whoa'  wakeup call like one time I actually had my face mask bent by a shot by one of my teammates and another time I had one where my helmet wasn't secured right and it hit my helmet like a glancing blow and kind of pushed it towards the side and gave myself kind of a scar on there so that made me think twice about it a little bit but I think I kind of realized that I mean if your capable of getting your stick on the ball it’s not going to be much of an issue and also I figured that there’s always going to be horror stories of bad stuff happening in sports I mean you hear about kids getting beaned in the head by a baseball and that might kill them but I figured with something like that there’s such a low chance of it happening I wasn’t going to worry about serious damage other than obviously the bumps and bruises that you’re going to get.
DD: If you could sum up in a few words what you took away from lacrosse or playing sports in general that you can use in everyday life or as you go on into your career broadcasting sports?

JF: Yeah I feel like it kind of gave me a competitive side, that kind of grew a little bit in me. Like i love just playing a pickup game of something. Or even just doing some kind of competition against my friends you know it’s like 'oh yeah I get to think I’m better then you in this one thing for a short period of time.' But it also kind of bred an instinct of teamwork. I mean you have to work hard to get ahead and help yourself out but a lot of other times you’re going to be working with other people and you can’t kind of motivate yourself to help other people while you’re helping yourself then you’re going to run into a lot of problems and it’s going to be hard to maintain relationships with people if you’re not ever willing to help them out and I feel like sports kind of gave me an idea of a common goal of a group of people trying to get something done and I feel like that should serve me well in the future.

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