FITCHBURG — Something’s cooking in the Fitchburg defense, and it’s something they hope will make the turkey taste exquisite this year.
Of course, there’s a lot of ingredients that have gone into the success of the Red Raiders defensive corps in 2019, a team which yielded an average of only 10 points per game and posted a pair of shutouts during their win streak this fall. There’s a pinch of Dee Jones, a dash of Gabriel Rivera.
But there has also been a heavy helping of Gio Marrone, the FHS senior who has transformed not only his game, position-wise, but also his body to prepare for the rigors of this 2019 season.
In 2018, Marrone played inside linebacker, getting to the holes and stopping the run. But as he explained, he wasn’t in the best shape to play in the middle like that.
That changed during this past offseason, and he turned into a defensive lineman — a key chef in the Red Raiders cookery.
“Gio really just transformed his body,” said Fitchburg coach Tom DiGeronimo. “If you look at him last year and this year, he’s leaner, he’s faster. He’s really played at a high level. He’s the guy who sets the table for us on defense, and he’s been a good leader.
“He set out goals for himself, and he’s worked to accomplish things both individually and as a team, and has really been that spark to our defense. I’m proud of the effort, I’m proud of everything he’s done. He’s a weight-room kid, he eats right, he just takes care of himself.”
Marrone went into great detail describing his offseason training regimen.
“In the offseason, I went to a very strict diet, for like seven or eight months, of chicken, brown rice, broccoli, and protein powder, and I was working out at least six days a week,” he said. “Just really grinding it out, battling myself every day, making sure I was better than the day before, and had to make sure I got my sleep right. Muscle was building and fat was dropping, and it was just contagious, going crazy from there.”
And before anyone goes crazy about Mama Marrone prepping special meals for her baby boy, don’t fret: The young man who is pretty handy on the Red Raiders defensive line is pretty handy in the kitchen, too.
“Any seasoning I found in the cabinet, I threw it on the chicken,” he said, noting that he just sprinkled salt, pepper, Goya Adobo, and Italian herbs on it before sauteing. “And then sometimes I would put some hot sauce on it after it was cooked.
“I do cook a lot, but I just cook what I like, and I know how to cook what I like.”
And the brown rice and broccoli? Steamed. Sometimes he baked the broccoli, too.
And when he’s not cooking, he’s been doing his meal prep for the past three months on top of homework, which, of course, includes film study.
“He watches a lot of film, lots of film,” DiGeronimo said. “Like I said, he sets our defense, so he has to watch film to set up what we do.”
“I really try and make sure I watch everything that can prepare me the right way,” Marrone said. “And it’s just a ton of film work every week. Coach will give us stuff on Hudl to watch, and I make sure I try to watch all of it, at least a few times, and break down each play individually.”
On Thursday morning, Marrone will be responsible for setting up a defense that will look to contain Leominster quarterback Caeden Constant, as well as running backs Justus-Tyler Reynolds and Bryant Cordeiro.
But he’s not worried about tendencies or first steps.
“I’m just going to worry about myself,” he said. “I know I’ve just got to flow the right way. I know I have to get there. And I think when I’m there I can finish — if they go my way. Even if they go away from my way, I’m going to try to get there.
“Honestly, I just have that dog mentality. I really want to just want to be everywhere. I feel like there’s never enough. I just attacked every play like that.”
Marrone knows that Thursday is the last time he will step onto Crocker Field as a high school football player, and he’s using last year’s loss to Leominster — a 36-0 defeat on Thanksgiving Eve — as fuel for this final tilt.
“The Wednesday game (last year) was really tough,” he said. “I really wanted to send those seniors out nice and high; I was close to them. It didn’t work that way. I have a lot of energy right now because of that, I really don’t want to go out that way. I know my teammates don’t want to go out that way. I think we’re just getting after it at practice. And we just remember last year; we don’t want that to happen again.”
