Nick Palazzo · Mayfield High School
Nick Palazzo at Mayfield High School: Ohio's Three-Time All-Ohio Running Back
Before Harvard Stadium and the Ivy League title, Nick Palazzo was a Northeast Ohio kid wearing number 22 who turned Mayfield High School into one of the state's most dangerous teams. This is the full story of how Nick Palazzo became a three-time All-Ohio running back, from a neighbor's snowy backyard to the 1998 Ohio State Semifinals.
Before Mayfield: the making of number 22
Nick Palazzo's football story starts with his older brother. When Nick was seven, his brother tucked a football under his arm and declared, "You're going to be a running back." Nick ran at him upright on the first drill and got knocked out cold. He never ran upright again, and he never played another position.
Ohio winters did the rest. For five years, every snowstorm of six inches or more meant a 2-on-2 tackle game in a neighbor's backyard. Nick's team, paired against his brother and an older neighbor, lost 99 games in a row. In year six, at age 12, they finally won one. Nick Palazzo has written that the stubborn refusal to quit, fueled by faith and family, began in those snow bowls.
Source: Let It Snow: Nick Palazzo's Epic Backyard Snow Bowls
Why Nick Palazzo wears number 22
In sixth grade, Nick weighed 77 pounds at sign-ups for his parish CYO team, eight pounds short of the 85-pound minimum. A parent stuffed rocks into his pants so he could make weight. The coach later admitted he figured out the trick and let him join anyway, assuming such a small player would never see the field.
Number 21 was taken, so Nick chose number 22, remembering his Grandma Dee's favorite card-table saying: "Deuces are wild." The number became a family signature. He was born at 2:02 and grew up in a family of four. Years later he named his youth sports company 2x2 Sports.
CYO football: a city championship and a 400-yard game
That sixth-grade season, the undersized Nick Palazzo came off the bench in the CYO Cleveland City Championship and ripped off run after run to flip field position, setting up the game-winning touchdown. Afterward, the parish priest told him: "You finally did something good for this community." Nick has said that was the moment football became a calling.
In seventh grade he became the starting running back for St. Francis. In his first game he scored about five touchdowns, all of 50 yards or more. His coaches later said they lost track of his yardage and stopped counting at 400. After his final touchdown, an opposing player hit him from behind after the whistle, breaking his hand and ending his season after one game.
The Big Mac decision and an undefeated eighth-grade season
Before eighth grade, Nick's beloved elementary school gym teacher, who was also the Mayfield middle school football coach, wanted him to play for the hometown Mayfield Wildcats. He promised Nick's brother and a friend a Big Mac meal each if they could convince him to switch. It worked: Mayfield fielded nearly 80 players in a single grade, and the Wildcats were the team Nick had always dreamed of joining.
Mayfield went 8-0, and Nick Palazzo scored more than 20 touchdowns. In one game, with Mayfield leading 28-0 during a lightning storm, a coach said, "I see lightning in the sky… and I see lightning on the field." The nickname "Lightning" stuck, and the opponent declined to come back out after halftime.
One of the most decorated running backs in Ohio
At Mayfield High School, Nick Palazzo earned All-Ohio honors three times. His senior season brought First Team All-State recognition and a place among the candidates for Ohio Mr. Football, the state's most prestigious high school football award.
He was also a three-time First Team All-Conference and three-time First Team All-Northeast Ohio running back. That recognition came year after year, not from one breakout season. Nick Palazzo has always credited his offensive linemen, the brothers who opened the holes.
Source: Nick Palazzo — Football
Proven in the Greater Cleveland Conference
Nick Palazzo spent two seasons in the Greater Cleveland Conference, one of the toughest high school football leagues in America, facing programs that regularly sent players to major college football. Over three years as a starter he amassed nearly 5,000 all-purpose yards and nearly 60 touchdowns, making him one of the most feared backs in Northeast Ohio.
The 1998 run to the state semifinals
In 1998, Nick Palazzo led Mayfield to the Ohio State Semifinals, the program's first trip that deep since 1984. As a senior he was named Western Reserve Conference MVP after Mayfield won the conference championship. For a community that had waited fourteen years for a run like that, the 1998 season became a defining chapter, and number 22 was at the center of it.
No Ohio State offer, and a different path
Despite heavy recruiting, Nick Palazzo did not receive a scholarship offer from his dream school, Ohio State, because of his height. Rather than let that define him, he chose the Ivy League and narrowed his decision to Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
He committed to Harvard, drawn by the chance to play in The Game, the oldest rivalry in college football. As he wrote about his ninth-grade setbacks, "never get too high, and never stay too low." That decision led directly to one of the greatest seasons in Harvard history.