2021 OL Nolan Rucci Blessed With Strong Support System
Todd and Stacy Rucci had phenomenal experiences as student-athletes at Penn State.
“Penn State for me, was awesome,” says Todd. “For Stacy, it was awesome. We loved it; we still love it. It was a great experience, had an amazing experience, made great friends. Everything about it was awesome.”
They want the exact same experience for their son, 2021 Pennsylvania offensive lineman Nolan Rucci.
But they know for Nolan, having the kind of college experience they had could require him to go somewhere other than Happy Valley and that’s perfectly fine with them.
“You need to find that for you,” says Todd. “Wherever that is.”
Nolan knows that. In fact, not only does he not feel any pressure to attend Penn State, he doesn’t feel any pressure to play football at all, not even from a father who played eight seasons in the NFL.
“If I wanted to stop right now and quit football and live my own life, they’d be 100 percent cool with it,” Nolan says. “Obviously, I love football, so I’d never want to do that, but they’ve been extremely helpful along the way.”
Nolan’s older brother, Hayden, is a freshman tight end at Wisconsin.
“When he walked onto that campus the first time and when we went back, we knew that he fit there,” Todd says. “That was where he felt comfortable. Watching him be happy with his decision even more solidified our push to make sure that Nolan needs to find his fit wherever that is.
“It’s got to be for you because you’re going to class, you’re going to practice, you’ve got to fit in that locker room and with the coaching staff and academics. You’re the one it has to fit. Not Mom, not Dad and not Hayden.”
Todd played offensive line for the Nittany Lions while Stacy played field hockey in Happy Valley.
Stacy’s parents both attended Syracuse and her father played football for the Orange. She still remembers sitting down at her dining room table as a high school senior and deciding she was headed to Penn State instead of Syracuse.
“I thought my dad’s heart was going to fall out of his chest because he wanted a legacy athlete,” says Stacy, one of five children, who all went to separate colleges. “He was just like, ‘Alright, that’s awesome. I love it.’”
He loved it, but not enough to ever join in with the “We Are” chant, although her mother had no problem.
Todd and Stacy’s college experiences began by choosing a school nobody in their families had ever attended, so they aren’t about to steer one of their sons toward picking a college just because that’s where they went.
“I’m my own person and sometimes I have to go my own way,” Nolan says. “Just being supportive is their thing. If I want to go anywhere and see any school, they’re 100 percent onboard taking me there to make sure I have all of the information to make the best decision.”
Todd played for the New England Patriots from 1993-2000 and started in Super Bowl XXXI. Stacy’s father, Thomas Gilburg, played offensive line for Syracuse, where he won a national championship in 1959, and with the Baltimore Colts before coaching for five decades, including 28 years as head coach of Franklin & Marshall College.
“Both sides, they’ve grown up in a football family, so they’ve learned the sacrifices and what football is and definitely what it’s not,” Todd says of Nolan and Hayden.
But they weren’t necessarily destined to play football. More than anything, Stacy and Todd just wanted to expose their boys to as many sports as possible.
Growing up, they played football, basketball, baseball and lacrosse. They were on swim teams, spent time snowboarding and skiing in the winter and water skiing and wakeboarding in the summer. They did some gymnastics, wrestling and a little bit of taekwondo. They never played competitive tennis, but did do a tennis camp one summer and while they didn’t play organized hockey, they played plenty of pond hockey.
Nolan is a pretty good ice skater and Hayden still bugs his mom about not putting them on a hockey team, but the early morning ice time would have been too much with everything else going on with two boys separated by a year and a half.
“I was going to have three or four boys and do them all 18 months apart, but these two did me in,” laughs Stacy. “They were just crazy…I tried to put them in everything.”
Early on, many of the smaller, quicker kids enjoyed the most success, but none of that matter to their parents.
“The only thing we’d ever get mad at them for was lack of effort,” says Stacy. “It wasn’t for playing poorly or whatever, it was just effort.”
Todd and Stacy aren’t just former athletes. Todd coaches offensive line at Warwick High School and Stacy coached field hockey at both Duke and Stanford after her playing career ended. They wanted to be sure their kids learned the values that come from team sports.
“I think the biggest thing is taking constructive criticism from a coach who you may like, you may not like, you may get along with, you may not get along with,” says Todd. “That’s real life. Working with a team, working with teammates.
“As you progress, you’re able to rely on different people you may not get along with or necessary be friends with, but when you’re competing together, you have a common goal. For us, it was making sure our kids learned how to work with others and compete against others and do it respectfully. Honor the sport, the sportsmanship.”
When it comes to football, many of those lessons reinforce what’s learned in the classroom and vice versa
“It actually goes both ways,” says Todd. “Learning how to sacrifice, learning how to study and learning to be honest with yourself, learning what you’re good at and recognizing what you need to work on, those things are very helpful. They have a very good sense of who they are as people and number two, who they are as athletes and recognizing the potential and the path to get to be great.”
Academics has always come somewhat easy for Nolan and Hayden.
“Somehow Todd and I made these two smart kids,” Stacy laughs, noting that she’s never really seen them struggle with homework or studying.
“My thing was always, ‘If school is that easy and you have time to play video games and things like that then I expect A’s.’”
They never disappointed her.
“You always want your kid to be better than you were,” Todd says. “Academically, our guys have outshined both of their parents. They’re a lot smarter than we are. They’ve developed in the classroom at a very high level.”
Todd played football as a youngster, but has no memories of winning or losing. He just remembers having fun and that’s what he wanted for his boys.
It was obvious they had natural gifts early and as they matured physically and mentally things “finally clicked,” according to Stacy.
And when they did, it helped that they were never pressured by their parents.
When they got to high school, it became apparent each would have futures in football as both Hayden and Nolan had scholarship offers by the end of their sophomore years.
“That gave them some motivation, direction and confirmation that ‘I can be something at the next level. I have some potential, which people see,’” says Todd.
The training and the demands of the recruiting process bumped basketball and lacrosse out of the picture as the family had to “be a little selfish” in the offseason, according to Todd, noting that their college choices would be 40-year decisions.
“It was tough for all of us, including us as parents, to focus on one sport, but understanding where they were and the positions they were in, it made sense,” he says.
That’s when things started to get really exciting for Todd as a football guy and an o-line coach.
“For Nolan playing the position I played and knowing that position really well, it’s been fun to give him some of the next-level techniques and things to think about,” says Todd.
“It’s been really neat to share some of those things that took me quite a long time to figure out on my own and have coaches coach me up. To be able to pass that along to your own son is pretty special.”
But that coach-player relationship doesn’t extend beyond the field.
“We make sure that when we’re at home, we’re just Dad and Mom and that’s what it’s all about, being a family,” says Todd. “I’m literally coaching Nolan for two and a half hours. As soon as we step off that field and get in the car to come home, we don’t talk about football.
“If he wants to, it’s absolutely OK, but for a 16-year-old kid, you have to have a break to just be you. We really work hard to make sure we don’t talk about the things you did well and things you can do well when we’re home. Now, if you want to talk about it, I’m all about it. But you have to have a break as a 16-year-old kid…We shouldn’t put that on our kids just because we’re coaching.”
As much as anybody, Todd understands that football is a true grind, so he’s done his best to keep everything in proper balance.
“I just want to make sure he enjoys it and enjoys it for the right reasons and just be a high school kid,” he says. “You only get to be a high school kid one time.
“Through all of this and all of the attention and the positions they’re in, at the same time, he’s still a junior in high school and should still be thinking that way.
“They need to understand that just because your old man and your grandfather played it, don’t put that pressure on yourself that I have to do this just because my dad did. I’ve played with guys who were in that position and I just wasn’t sure they loved the game. I just wanted to make sure that if my guys were going to play this sport, I want them to have the same passion that I had.”
Todd didn’t come from football family himself, but fell in love with the physical and mental aspects of the game.
Stacy says her parents never pressured her or any of her siblings into athletics despite her father’s background as a pro and a coach. If she wanted his help, she had to ask.
“It wasn’t him saying, ‘You need to do this. You need to do that,’” she recalls, noting how her parents treated all of her siblings equally.
“I guess I just learned from them not to put so much pressure on either of the boys.”
Even though they went through the recruiting process themselves, it doesn’t look anything like it did back then.
“When Todd and I were getting recruited, it was pretty much our senior year in high school,” Stacy chuckles, noting you got a handful of offers and simply picked one in February, a few months before reporting to college.
“I know a lot about football and my wife recruited when she was at Stanford and Duke, so she had a little bit of experience recruiting for field hockey, but we had no idea, NO IDEA how this all worked,” says Todd. “We learned a lot.”
“We were just blown away,” Stacy adds. “Hayden was only a sophomore and Nolan was in eighth grade when we started on this journey. Some of the places we went were really over the top.”
After being entrenched in the process for several years now, colleges now have a better feel for the family and what they value.
“Now that they know us, they know we’re a little bit more low-key about it,” says Stacy.
Watching Hayden go through the process from the start gave Nolan invaluable insight as he began his own recruitment. He went on all of the visits and was listening in the background all along. After the trips, his parents would ask for his input and he would point out the pros and cons of each schiool.
“He would have an absolutely on-point perspective of each coach, each place,” Todd recalls. “He has been awesome through the process. He understands the process and doesn’t get caught up in a lot of the shiny stuff.”
It’s also given his parents some perspective that they might not have had earlier.
“We’re already kind of on the other side of recruiting,” says Stacy. “Now we know what it’s actually like to be an athlete at the school because of Hayden.
“We know how hard it is and I think that’s another reason why we don’t really need to see all of the shiny stuff. We know once recruiting is done, all of that stuff goes away. The honeymoon is over.”
Pitches involving NFL opportunities, slick stadiums and the freshest uniforms aren’t likely to move the needle for Nolan or his family.
“All of that stuff doesn’t matter,” says Todd. “It matters, but the important things are the people you’re going to be surrounded by, the educational potential that you want, whatever that is, and do you see yourself with the people who are on campus, in that locker room, on the coaching staff? Do you feel like that’s comfortable for you?
“That’s where he really has really done a really good job of filtering through a lot of the things in the process that some other kids may get caught up in. He’s been great in focusing on what we as a family feel matters.”
The Ruccis want to give Nolan as much information as possible to make the best decision, which is why they were in the midst of a multi-school swing before the NCAA instituted an immediate dead period. They visited Clemson and Tennessee earlier this month and whenever in-person recruiting is allowed again, they plan to be at Notre Dame, Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin.
“We’re in that phase here of trying to see things for the second time and some places for the first time,” says Todd. “Our goal as Mom and Dad is that you have to be happy. Wherever that is, whatever the academic piece looks like and whatever the colors look like, whatever the alma mater is, we’re going to be great with it as long as you love it. We’re really trying to make the process all about Nolan and making sure he has everything he needs to make a great long-term lifetime decision.”
Stacy is looking forward to seeing how Nolan fits at each school.
“All of these schools are amazing schools,” she says. “They have so many things to offer academically, athletically, personally. It’s going to come down to a feeling.
“There are things I love about certain schools, but I’m not the one going there. I’m not waking up at 5:30 to go out the door for morning practice and getting home at 10 o’clock at night.”
Having a father who played in the NFL gives both Hayden and Nolan a good perspective on how football will end one day.
“You only get to play this game for such a short period of your life,” says Todd. “You won’t have the ability to play when you’re 40 years old. You can just go with a bunch of guys and play a quick game of hoops or softball or golf. You don’t do that. You’re given a small window of your life. It’s a gift.
“I absolutely think it has helped give them a perspective of what the sport can give you if you use it correctly. There is some real ugliness to the sport, but there are some amazing opportunities if done right.”
They aren’t finished parenting yet – and in truth, they probably never will be – but they’re getting close to seeing the end of a chapter.
“When you’re playing the game for so long and then you’re coaching the game so long, you kind of get lost in the process, but it’s been real nice for us to sit back and watch two young athletes experience the opportunity to play at the next level,” says Todd. “I’m excited about what goes along with that.
“Hayden’s at a great place and thriving in Madison. If we can find Nolan his spot and his path then Stacy and I can probably take a step back and breathe. You’re never done as a parent, but that will be the end of a chapter where we can take a step back, grab a glass of wine and a beer and just breathe for a second.”