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Notre Dame grad receives academic scholarship to play football at Queen's University Posted 26-June-09 BERND FRANKE Tribune Staff WELLAND — On the surface Dave Lostracco’s math skills seem suspect. How else could you explain his insistence that as little as 20 minutes of playing time is more than equal to 10-plus hours of practice and many more lifting weights in the gym? But that’s not taking interest into account, and there was plenty of interest after the 19-year-old Welland native graduated from Notre Dame where he spent three seasons hitting — and getting hit — in the trenches as a left offensive tackle. Guelph, McMaster, Queen’s, Simon Fraser, Wilfrid Laurier and York universities envisioned adding Lostracco’s 6-foot-5, 285-pound to the wall in front of their quarterbacks and offensive backfields. South of the border Hastings College in Nebraska and the University of Western New Mexico likewise touted Lostracco as a prospect. In the end, the son of Ron and Norma Lostracco opted to make Kingston the next stop on what he hopes will be a road to a career playing professional football. “I don’t think there’s a better place to get a degree than Queen’s,” said Lostracco, who intends to major in political science with an eye on one day working in the field of law. While schools north of the border can’t award athletic scholarships, as colleges and universities can in the United States, Queen’s expressed its desire on having Lostracco on its team by giving him an academic scholarship. He quips that a law degree could one day see him negotiating his own contract with a CFL team. It wasn’t too, too long away that Dave Lostracco was a defenceman in hockey who “only liked football as a fan.” “I wasn’t sure I wanted to put in the time,” he said of following in the footsteps of his father who played in the under-21 Canadian Junior Football League with the St. Catharines Raiders. Eventually, he accepted an invitation to come out to tryouts from Notre Dame head coach Tim Bisci who met Lostracco in a school hallway with the greeting: “You’re a big guy. You should try it (football).” “Since then, I’ve put in the time and I haven’t looked back since,” said Lostracco, who so far has two chapters to his football career. The first was written in high school while he was playing with the Fighting Irish , where he was taught the basics, with the followup occurring in the Ontario Varsity Football League where Lostracco played with the Niagara Spears. He said high school was important in teaching the fundamentals, “but most of the learning occurred with the Spears.” “With the Spears, you were learning how to play the game, almost at a university level,” added Lostracco who in his lone season in the OVFL lined up against players as old as 20. Though Notre Dame has traditionally been among the premier teams in the Premier Division of high school football in Niagara, playing with the Spears was an eye-opening experience for Lostracco. “Since they’re a regional team, made up of the best players from all the schools, the level of play with the Spears is much higher. Every week you’re playing an all-star team, and you’re an all-star playing on an all-star team,” he said of the experience playing in the OVFL. Getting playing time as a rookie with a Queen’s team that went 8-0 in league play last year isn’t a prospect that Lostracco finds intimidating. He takes comfort in knowing that he has the size to take his game to the next level. It was the same when he tried out for the Fighting Irish and with the Spears. “I knew almost right away that with my size, I would be able to play if I put in the time. As soon as I started playing I knew that this is what I wanted to do, so I put in the time.” One of the unsung warriors who fight it out for inches along the line of scrimmage while the backs and receivers gain yards and headlines, offensive linemen usually only get noticed when they miss a blocking assignment and their quarterback gets sacked. Lostracco doesn’t mind playing under the radar because he knows the coaches are watching and his teammates appreciate the sacrifice. “You’re there to win games, not awards.” Before Lostracco left a part-time job at No Frills he had as many as four jobs that he had to juggle around football and his regular workouts at X Fitness on Division St. in downtown Welland. He also works at Ball Hockey International in Welland as a referee, as a part-time employee with the Niagara Catholic District School Board and as a security guard at a club in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Throughout it all, Lostracco kept up his studies in high school, maintaining an average of at least 80%, and he suggested that football might have played a role in that diligence. “Football has made me do better in school, because I knew if my marks went down I wouldn’t play.” And Dave Lostracco plans on playing his now favourite sport for years to go, hopefully at the professional level. He believes that his position leaves him ideally suited to get noticed by scouts on both sides of the border. “What Canadians make it in the NFL? You’re either a kicker or on the O line,” Lostracco said in suggesting that “size travels well,” especially from the three-down Canadian game to the United States, which plays four-down football. “From playing Canadian football, you would be ready to play any where on a passing offence,” he said. sports@wellandtribune.ca |
