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In loving memory: Spirit of late aunt guiding arm of Iowa’s Stanzi

By Eric Page | 9 comment(s)

Making his first career start Saturday, sophomore quarterback Ricky Stanzi threw for 162 yards and three touchdowns against Florida International. (The Associated Press)

The wound still is fresh, the tears still flowing. The pain is as permanent as the ink on the inner bicep of Ricky Stanzi’s throwing arm.

In bold, black lettering, the words “Aunt Annette” remind Iowa’s sophomore quarterback of the spirit that lost its body to cancer 27 months ago, the spirit that was all too present Saturday in Kinnick Stadium as Stanzi threw for three touchdowns in his starting debut.

“Ricky was like a son to her,” Stanzi’s 81-year-old grandmother, Lena, said Sunday, “and she so looked forward to seeing him play at Iowa. Of course, she didn’t last long enough.

“After my daughter passed away, he had ‘Aunt Annette’ tattooed on his upper arm. He always said to me, ‘Grandma, when I throw that ball, I’m throwing it for Aunt Annette.’ I just cried all day Saturday because she wasn’t here to see it.”

Annette Collins, the younger sister of Stanzi’s father, Joe, never had a son of her own. She had two daughters, but, having been raised in a blue-collar family in the Cleveland suburb of Painesville, Ohio, she had a long-standing love affair with football, and she fed her passion by following the athletic careers of her nephews, especially Ricky, the oldest of Joe’s three boys.

There was an unbreakable bond between the two, which is why it shook Stanzi’s world when Aunt Annette was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2005, right as he was finishing his junior year on the basketball court at Lake Catholic High School.  

The prognosis was grim. It was an aggressive cancer, starting in the breasts and spreading to the brain and liver before eventually overtaking her body. But it never robbed her of her spirit and never kept her from making it to Stanzi’s football and basketball games his senior year.

“She was so active,” Stanzi’s grandmother said. “She never missed anything when he was at Lake Catholic, no matter how she felt. She just went to every single game.”

“She was a good inspiration for him when she was going through the sickness,” Joe Stanzi said. “He thought about how much joy he brought her. She said some really special things to him before she passed.”

No one, not even Stanzi, was more excited than Aunt Annette when Stanzi signed with Iowa in the spring of 2006. It was a program miles from home, which would make it hard for the family to always be there to see him play — in fact, no one from Stanzi’s family was in attendance Saturday, and neither grandma nor dad saw the game live on TV — but it was a program more in keeping with the Stanzi family values.

Strangely enough, it was the place Stanzi grew up wanting to play.

“When he was a kid, watching Big Ten games, I used to tell him he was going to be an Iowa Hawkeye, and he’d say, ‘I’d love to be a Hawkeye,’ ” Joe Stanzi said. “We just love that. It’s Midwestern. We grew up back here in Ohio, so you’ve got the Ohio State thing, but I think Iowa is a better representative of the tough, middle-class, tough-guy image, you know, blue collar.”

Three months after signing day, in May 2006, Aunt Annette lost her fight with cancer. She was 45.

Stanzi was devastated. She’d been such a constant in his life, such a supporter of his dreams.

“She was just very close to him,” Joe Stanzi said with a trembling voice. “She was just a huge football fan, a real big football fan. She followed him from his first game all the way through. She was his biggest cheerleader.

“She would always say, ‘He’s going to play in the NFL.’ She would say that ever since he was a kid.”

No one knows, at this point, if Stanzi will make it to the NFL. No one even knows yet if he’s going to be an effective starting quarterback in the Big Ten, or even if he’ll start this Saturday’s game against Iowa State.

But his performance against FIU was, in keeping with his family values, decidedly blue-collar and efficient — 8-of-10 passing, 162 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions. Add in 30 yards rushing on five carries, and one could argue Stanzi played flawlessly.

He was playing with an angel on his shoulder, or rather his bicep. It was an out-of-body experience.

“I was excited, nervous, too,” Stanzi said. “After a couple plays, though, all that was gone, and it was easy to relax and just play the game from there.”

Joe Stanzi has been in the background of his son’s development as a player at Iowa. They trade text messages daily, but the father has a full plate a home.

He has three sons playing football now. Vinnie, 17, is a senior wide receiver at Lake Catholic and had a game Saturday night, and Joey, 10, made his debut as a starting quarterback in his youth league Saturday afternoon as his big brother was picking apart the FIU secondary.

Joe Sr. made it home from that game in time to catch the fourth quarter of the Hawkeyes' 42-0 rout, but Stanzi had long since been pulled.

Sunday, after church, Joe sat down with his brother-in-law, Brad, Aunt Annette’s husband, and watched the replay of the game. He liked what he saw from his son, who up until this spring was a non-factor in the quarterback conversation at Iowa.

“I think he had to mature,” Joe Stanzi said. “The situation at Iowa has been perfect for him. As much as he wanted to see the field last year, the coaches know more than the fans or anybody else. I’ve always told him, ‘All you’ve got to do is make those guys look like the smartest guys in the world because they gave you an opportunity to play.’”

What they gave him was an opportunity, in front of 70,585 fans, to remember — and honor — Aunt Annette, and he did so with touchdown passes of 59, 23 and 8 yards, flexing his bicep with each throw and, after each, pointing to the sky.

Contact Eric Page at (563) 383-2277 or epage@qctimes.com.

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