Northwestern University Athletics
Ohio Game Program Features: Sam Valenzisi
10/16/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 16, 2008
Next time you get the chance to kick back and lose yourself in your own thoughts for a little while, ask yourself this question: how important is it to you to live life with a step-by-step plan in mind? Are you the type of person who is much more sitting back and reacting to whatever life throws at you, or are you the type that likes to take control of the laws of cause-and-effect in life?
Former standout Wildcat kicker Sam Valenzisi has lived life as the latter. For him, being successful is almost always the product of having a good strategy. When you start to understand his upbringing, it isn't hard to connect the dots and realize why Valenzisi might be wired in just that way.
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Valenzisi's father, Al, was a longtime head football coach at John Marshall High School in Cleveland, Ohio, and was nothing short of obsessed with the intricacies of the game. From the time Sam was an infant, Al constantly involved his son in film study sessions, coaches meetings and football chalk talk. Al even shifted the family's season tickets at Cleveland Browns games from the 35-yard line to behind the end zone so he could have a better view for watching the play unfold piece by piece.
"When we first got cable TV and we would watch games together, I remember my dad sitting on the couch diagramming the blocking being run by Southern Cal because he knew they ran it the best," Valenzisi said. "Strategy in every sport was so important to him and everything was a coachable moment."
Adapting his father's values, Sam Valenzisi has plotted out a step-by-step strategy in life that helped him find a home away from home at Northwestern, go from a walk-on kicker to a captain of a team in the Rose Bowl, and eventually reach the status of vice president in a Chicago investment banking firm, Lincoln International.
None of it happened by accident.
For all the stories you hear about kickers who stumbled into their trade, either by converting from soccer or by picking it up to keep a spot on their high school football teams, Valenzisi is not cut from that mold. He's always been a football player, and he's always wanted the ball in his hands--or on his foot--at the end of the game.
"Time and opportunity were what I had as a kid," Valenzisi said. "We had a big backyard and also lived near a field so I could go down the street and kick balls all day. In four years of high school football I attempted four field goals and only made one. But I worked hard at it and really enjoyed it to the point where I was kicking 500 balls a day during the summer."
A self-described perfectionist, Valenzisi wasn't satisfied with just making a kick if he didn't hit it just right, in the way that only a kicker can know.
He spent a lot of time deliberating over what college would be the best fit for him; that is, until he visited his three finalists--Northwestern, Notre Dame and Ohio State--and realized how at home he felt in Evanston. As a freshman in 1991, Valenzisi watched NU's first home football game from the bleachers and knew before the game was even over that he had to take a shot at making it to the Northwestern sidelines as a kicker.
That January, Valenzisi attended NU's walk-on tryout, which led to the first set of spring practices being directed by head coach Gary Barnett. A new coaching regime meant everybody, including Valenzisi, was given the same chance to compete for a roster spot.
"Coach Barnett said he would evaluate me through the spring and I kicked well enough that he kept me around, even after the spring game when I missed three extra points," Valenzisi said. "I was devastated and I think Coach knew I was distraught because of how hard I had worked."
Come football season, Valenzisi won the place-kicking duties just one game into the 1993 schedule and never looked back, kicking 24 field goals over his sophomore and junior years.
Along the way, he garnered so much respect among his teammates that they elected him one of three captains for what turned out to be a dream season in 1995.
"Being voted a captain is still to this day one of my proudest accomplishments," Valenzisi said. "I tried to lead by example and press everyone to be their best. Maybe guys saw me shoveling snow off the turf in the winter so I could kick or coming into the locker room after it had gotten dark outside after practice. Whatever it was, it meant a lot to earn their respect."
For Valenzisi, the son of a football coach who understands the game's strategy as well as anyone, it was not hard to figure out why Coach Barnett sometimes used Valenzisi's kicking services sparingly.
"I didn't try too many long field goals that year because when you have a defense as good as ours and a punter as good as Paul Burton, I knew the right thing was to pin a team deep in its own end of the field, beat them with field position and make them punt it back to us," he said.
That year, Valenzisi reveled in seeing the entire Northwestern community rally around the football program. He wells with pride when recalling the 1995 homecoming pep rally, the sea of purple that filled the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day, and watching friends of the program like longtime NU marching band director John Paynter experience the annual spectacle in Pasadena.
"I can't tell you what it meant to see people pull out Northwestern sweatshirts they hadn't worn in years and come out to games," he said. "They'd always been proud of where they went to school and now they had a forum and a reason to discuss it."
On top of that, he carries with him the memory of Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany coming into NU's post-game locker room at Purdue to present the conference championship trophy to the Wildcats.
"With just the players, coaches and staff in the locker room it was a chance to look around at each other and celebrate together what we had accomplished," Valenzisi said. "Every Saturday we shared our wins and excitement with the fans and the school but at that moment it was just us. I think those private moments with my teammates are what I miss most about playing."
Unfortunately, Valenzisi's senior season had come to an abrupt end in the 'Cats 35-0 dismantling of Wisconsin in the seventh game of the year. He injured his knee celebrating a well-executed kickoff late in the game, forcing him to miss the remaining games. But he proved his ability to roll with the punches when life doesn't go as planned, remaining as influential as ever in a leadership role with the team and as an ambassador of the program in the media at the Rose Bowl.
Valenzisi finished his career having made 39 field goals, including a school-record 13 in a row in 1995, and ranks ninth in Northwestern history with 169 points scored. The former walk-on had come full circle, garnering first-team All-America, All-Big Ten and Academic All-America honors.
While an undergrad an NU, Valenzisi transferred into the Medill School of Journalism and completed his teaching newspaper requirement in Boulder, Colo., reporting and working at the editor's desk for the Daily Camera. He earned his master's degree from Medill but started his professional career with investment firms William Blair & Company in Chicago before leaving for another opportunity in Minnesota. In 2002, Valenzisi began commuting from Minnesota to Chicago every weekend while earning a graduate business degree from the University of Chicago, from which he graduated in 2005.
Valenzisi is now a vice president of the Chicago office of Lincoln International, a worldwide investment banking firm that assists companies through mid-market mergers and acquisitions. His job description goes beyond just managing financial analysis to include marketing his clients for potential sale transactions.
Without question, the ties between Valenzisi's football roots and his professional endeavors are more prominent than they may seem at first glance.
"There is a lot of strategic thinking that goes into what we do at Lincoln," he said. "I use every single skill I've picked up since I started schooling, it's different and challenging every day and it's a team-based environment where I really enjoy the people I work with."
Sam and his wife of six years, Meggan Friedman, a graduate of Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, both began working at William Blair on the same day.
"She's much smarter than I am," Valenzisi said. "I definitely `outkicked my coverage' when I married her."
"I think Sam is particularly good at what he does because he enjoys learning about new sectors of business that his clients are involved in and he genuinely cares about helping them achieve their objectives," Friedman said.
Living in Chicago has made it easy to keep strong ties with the university for Valenzisi, who has had Northwestern season tickets since the year after he graduated from NU and said he suffers from "withdrawal" when he's not informed about the football team.
"Saturdays are exciting," Friedman said. "The games are fun, the atmosphere is great and there's a fun sense of community among Northwestern football fans, whether it's Sam's teammates or the people we've been sitting with at games for the past ten years."
Sam and Meggan are members of the Northwestern Leadership Council, through which the two have a hand in the athletic development effort and donor relations while Meggan is also a member of the Council of 100.
"What lives on is the ability to always carry the banner for the university," he said. "Personally I'll always have memories of lining up against Ohio State, kicking four field goals during a game in the Big House at Michigan, seeing Joe Paterno on the other sideline--those are things not a lot of people get to do. But when you're 40 or 50 years old, the best part is telling people proudly that you went to NU."
Northwestern is lucky to have Sam Valenzisi carrying its banner, one step at a time, through each perfectly thought-out stage of his life.
