Pauletti overcomes lots of adversity to become key to Rams’ grid success when practice starts Monday
August 21, 2024 at 10:52 p.m.
Port Chester's bruising fullback John Pauletti, a truly battering Ram on offense and defense, has been named as one of Westchester's players to watch in Lohud's listing of the best area players announced Monday (8/19) in a roll covering Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and the lower Hudson Valley.
Only Pauletti knows how much adversity he has had to overcome to find himself listed in that elite group.
Among other things, he has had to overcome a mysterious heart ailment, high blood pressure, debilitating headaches, energy-sapping aches and pains and more, all without complaining or ever using them as excuses.
But overcome them all he has. And he did it through hard work, exercise, positivity, immigrant and Nebraska drive and a blue-collar Port Chester mentality.
"I've always handled the worst things that ever happened to me by not giving up ever," he says.
The can- do attitude
That can-do attitude no matter what has attracted football scholarship interest from multiple colleges on various levels from D1 through D3.
Pauletti, 6:1, 190, and a near unstoppable force on offense and defense, will start showing what he can do as the Rams’ senior leader when Port Chester starts its official practices Monday (8/26) at the high school.
Pauletti has been Port Chester's main offense in the scheme of all things that happen on the gridiron. Because the Rams’ best play is Pauletti up the middle again and again with his body submerged low like a submarine that can rarely be stopped because he runs through and over rivals for vital yardage, taking the hits as they come and refusing to go down. Win or lose, he never backs down.
"I love that feeling of hitting and getting hit and feeling nobody can stop me," he says.
But it is a lot more than an Oklahoma-style three yards and a cloud of dust style of attack best captured in a single game against Panas early last season when Pauletti just kept bouncing off tacklers in a missile-like run up the middle for a 55-yard touchdown run near the start of the game and then came back for a similar power run up the middle from inside the 10-yard line where he kept shedding tacklers like they were corn husks on another TD burst.
The Nebraska/Italy influence
That corn husk imagery isn't an accident. Because Pauletti attributes his hard-nosed approach to running a football to spending a lot of time around his hardworking cousins in Nebraska where they grow them big and his mother, the former Kerry Crowley, grew up. Especially his uncle Ryan Crowley, who went on to play wide receiver for Princeton. It is that kind of image of a tough work environment in small town America that JP thinks of when he pictures Nebraska.
And then there are the pictures that capture the immigrant drive of his father who came to the melting pot that is Port Chester from Italy with his family.
"I walk by those picture every day when I walk into the high school because I walk by the Wall of Fame filled with pictures and plaques of the great Port Chester teams, and there is my young father and uncle on the league championship baseball teams of the late 1980s," Pauletti says.
So the athletic ability is in his genes, an aptitude shared with his cousin Dan Pauletti from Rye Brook who was recruited out of Iona Prep last year to play college ball as a center at Ithaca, one of the colleges interested in the Rams’ Pauletti, henceforth JP.
JP's passion for football came late. "Soccer was the first sport I ever played, and I didn't love it," JP remembers. "I tried playing flag football and basketball and I didn't love that either. But there I was starting to play tackle football when I was 6 or 7 years old and I was the youngest on the team and the youngest in the entire league, but at that point I didn't find football interesting. Until one day my dad took me to a game at the high school and from that day on, I fell in love with the sport. I've been playing football ever since, and that's definitely longer than anyone else on the current Rams team."
Coaching made a difference
He paused as though looking back on those years, as though trying to see the coaches who made an impact on him during those years, coaches with names like Pearl, Dolce and Gallo. "They were all guys who coached me when I was in the Rye Town Youth Football League in terms of learning football and understanding the game," JP recalled. "That was all on them. And sometimes when I run into them today, we talk and it's just a great time because I love those guys; they were great coaches and even better people."
Coach Chris Halstead talks to the Port Chester High School football team after their loss to Tappan Zee in the playoffs last season.Courtesy of John Pauletti
JP feels the same way about Ram coaches Chris Halstead and Mark Conlan.
"Both of them are old school guys, but there’s definitely a lot to learn from them both offensively and defensively when it comes to technique," JP says. "Coach Conlan has taught me lot, starting even with something as simple as the way your hand faces when you are in a 3-point stance. A lot of my defensive line success is due to his teachings. Like when he was in on the stops of four East Ramapo two-point conversions in the rain in a game the Rams won by two points with JP making the last tackle head on, although he doesn't mention it.
Instead, he says: "Coach Halstead I feel really taught me to be tough. I don’t really get to be with him much during practice because he doesn’t coach my specific positions, but he definitely pushes me to my limits every time I’m in a drill with him or in the weight room. And that has ultimately led to a lot of my success. Both Coach Halstead and Conlan get a lot of hate for some reason, but they are great coaches. They’ve been around a long time. And these guys are great people inside and outside of football, too. After practice most of us usually stay at the school for a while just to talk to them just for fun. They're great guys."
Man among boys
Asked to describe JP in the past, Halstead, the Rams head coach who is rebuilding the football program and hoping to turn around a losing culture, simply said: "He's a man among boys because of what he's been through."
JP shrugs off all those early mysterious heart ailments and headaches by saying "I handled the worst things that ever happened to me by just not giving up...during challenging times I just keep my focus on my goals...I usually relax by getting in a cold tub...or just playing video games with my friends or just hanging out with them or talking to them online...I stretch my body and mind in the same way—I’d relax and just kinda forget everything else.”
As for turning points in his career, JP said it was probably starting his first game ever as a sophomore and doing well. "I started at running back and I made a lot of great plays which I think boosted my confidence about what I could do going into my junior year."
Junior year turned out to be a very good year, including scoring the winning touchdown in a double overtime game against Hastings, a four-touchdown game in which he was an unstoppable force, and a touchdown scored in the homecoming game, although JP doesn't mention any of them.
Senior year pivotal
Instead he says his football career is all going to come down to his senior year. "I’ve been talking to a lot of colleges, and I have interest from multiple colleges at all levels, and it’s really all gonna come down to this senior year," JP says, noting that the team has been working out on its own since the end of last season to make this a memorable season.“We’ve had multiple practices over the summer including a weeklong camp at Briarcliff, multiple conditioning practices, individual position practices, hitting the weight room just about every day of the week. And we also played in a 7v7 tournament. So we’ve definitely been extremely active this year over the summer. I've also done a lot of working out on my own in the gym and on the high school track. Going out for the track team definitely helped me build up my speed and get fast and working in the field events (discus and shot put) helped my power as did going out for lacrosse...Lacrosse was something new for me, and I loved it because lacrosse got me into the best shape of my life. It’s similar to football which I liked, and stamina-wise it has helped a lot."
Naming the key names
As JP talked, he stressed that he didn't want any football article to be about him and insisted that there were a lot of other guys who should be mentioned and wanted to name them starting with junior quarterback Alexis (Ace) Morel because Morel prevented opponents from keying on him with his ability to scramble for long gainers on QB keeps and fill the air with passes to talented wide receivers like Jeremy Noel, Scott Sullivan and transfer Xavier Tapia. He predicted that Alber (The Hulk) was going to be an offensive and defensive force as would Brian Escobar at middle linebacker and that Jefferson (Swiss Army Knife) Castaneda would be the team's most versatile player at corner back, outside linebacker as well as backup quarterback on offense behind Morel who was also named by Lohud as a Port Chester player to watch.
That could be the potential nucleus of a team JP thinks will certainly miss the speedy Marc Dorsainvil who has decided to concentrate on T&F and such graduated seniors as two-way back John Delcid and hard-hitting lineman Jaden Barbour. But, whatever happens, he says Halstead will have the Rams ready and raring to go in time for the opening game away Sept. 6, a Friday night lights game against Horace Greeley that starts at 6 p.m. The Rams’ first home game is scheduled against Albertus Magnus Sept. 14 at 1:30 p.m. and goes on from there to include independent league games against Long Island Lutheran, Peekskill, Woodlands, Tappan Zee and Walter Panas.
And, whatever happens, win or lose, JP is guaranteed to be the player to watch for the Rams.
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