Ex-Ram dual sports star Lizandro Espinosa switches careers to aid potential greats at Crunch
August 16, 2023 at 10:00 p.m.
He was a former Rams dual sports star athlete in wrestling and football who played a role in one of Port Chester's most thrilling comebacks in nearly the past two decades. He was a STEER for Student Athletes honors grad, was nominated for the prestigious "Heart of a Giant" award and envisioned a career in criminal justice after graduation but was sidelined by COVID, dropped out of college, worked in a local pizzeria and found a new career in his love for physical fitness.
Lizandro Espinosa, 23, 5:5, 180 pounds, muscular and toned, still looking like the linebacker he used to be for the Rams, talked about the roundabout way that led to his becoming fitness manager at the sprawling Crunch Fitness gymnasium complex at 24 Waterfront Place in Port Chester where he is one of the guiding spirits behind its new Division 1 Athletics 1-on-1 sports training program.
"Sports has always played a major role in my life," Espinosa said.
And that's putting it mildly.
Career as Ram
He started wrestling for the Rams as a freshman and also played varsity football for the last Port Chester team to win a league championship in 2019 as a linebacker/fullback who went both ways on offense and defense.
Ex-Princeton wrestler and high school social studies program co-chair Tom Josephson, then head coach of the Rams wrestling team, was so impressed with his grit that he recommended Lizandro for the Heart of a Giant Award sponsored by the New York Giants pro football team to honor students who have overcome overwhelming odds. But he will probably always be best remembered as the kid who came out of nowhere to throw the block that kept the Rams comeback drive alive in a Friday night lights game away against Scarsdale in the game's dying minutes.
The Rams needed to score a touchdown and the extra point conversion to win the game with less than two minutes to play.
Carlyle Taylor, one of the Rams’ best running backs during the season that turned around a losing culture, took the kickoff on his own three-yard line and proceeded to weave his way upfield with three Raider defenders converging on him to make the tackle that would have pinned the Rams way back deep in their own territory with time running out. But before that could happen, Espinosa came out of nowhere to block them out and shake Taylor loose for a long gain that wound up on the Scarsdale 30-yard line.
Positive reinforcement
Paul Santavicca, the then Ram coach, called time out and confidently told his team they had plenty of time to score, were going to score, and would win the game. That kind of positive reinforcement had the team believing. And the Rams went through their two-minute drill with almost pro-like precision.
Tyler DeCrescenzo, the Rams’ best running back, a senior year transfer from the Stepinac state championship team, had already scored two touchdowns and Scarsdale was keying on him, so Santavicca used him as a diversion, and Rams quarterback Steve (The Gunslinger) Carroll picked the Raiders’ secondary apart. With 10 seconds to play, Carroll hit Melvin Molina with the winning touchdown pass and the two-point conversion, Melina saying afterwards that when that winning pass was coming towards him, he truly understood what all those practices were all about to get the Rams ready for that moment. Including the blocking from unsung players like Espinosa to set up the winning score.
That was in 2019.
Time remembered
Espinosa still gets chills thinking about that game. And still remembers the lessons learned that night. And what happened next.
He hoped to go to the John Jay School of Criminal Justice in NYC after high school graduation. But the scholarship money never came through. And he couldn't afford the tuition. So he took the free ride instead to Monroe College in New Rochelle, taking criminal justice as his major for the first two years, switching to accounting as a junior and then dropping out of college when COVID hit. He was working as a waiter at Frank's Pizzeria when another ex-Ram athlete, Jesse Villa, suggested he get certification as a personal trainer because that was the kind of job he would love. He did. That led him to a front desk job at Crunch, and that in turn led to his becoming fitness manager and his talk with personal trainer John D'Inderomo, a former high school football star athlete at Greenwich High School, their shared experiences leading up to their starting the new Division 1 Athletics 1-on-1 sports training program at Crunch where the motto is "together, we'll help the next generation of athletes crush their fitness goals."
In pondering those words, Espinosa can't help but think of the lessons he learned at Port Chester under coaches like Josephson and Santavicca and that Rams football win over Scarsdale in the last few seconds, including the way Rams stars of that game like Carlyle Taylor and Tyler DeCrescenzo gave way to the just graduated stars of last year's Ram football team, Colin Taylor (Carlyle's high-scoring kid bro) and Michael (Mickey D) DeCrescenzo (Tyler's cousin). It makes him wonder who will be coming up next and what Crunch can do to help them achieve their goals even as he has helped Jaylen Cummings, ex-Ram football player, recent P.C. grad and STEER scholarship winner, get a job at Crunch in the fitness profession.
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