Fisher's Greco Featured on D3Football.com
On the sidelines, but on a roll
Andrew Lovell, d3football.com
Bobby Greco had seen it before -- his offensive linemen weren't rolling their hips correctly on blocks. It was a common, but easily remedied technique issue.
So Greco calmly called his linemen together and explained it to them.
"I said, 'Every time you make a block, think of Happy Gilmore.' You know, Chubbs teaching him, 'When you putt, it's all in the hips.'"
At first, they laughed. But you better believe those hips were rolling from that point on.
Maybe the analogy doesn't come standard in playbooks. But then again, Greco is far from your average football coach.
The 23-year-old Greco, now in his fifth season as a student assistant with St. John Fisher, suffers from a rare congenital disorder called arthrogryposis. The condition, according to WebMD, causes "the development of nonprogressive contractures affecting one or more areas of the body." What this means is that, at birth, all of Greco's joints were locked, and most of them were out of place.
As he describes it, his hips were locked in an outward position, his legs stuck out "like frog legs," his arms were turned out in such a way that he couldn't bend his elbows, and he had club feet.
Greco underwent 21 surgeries by the time he was 14 years old -- most of them within the first three years of his life -- in an effort to correct these problems. Doctors have been able to get his hips in place, fix his feet and turn his right arm to a point where he can bend it, but Greco is still confined to an electric wheelchair and has only limited movement in both hands.
But the physical handicap doesn't even begin to tell the story of Greco. It's what football has given him, and what he's given back to the game and the players that play it that defines him.
Greco, a native of Geneva, N.Y., grew up a Buffalo Bills fan, just like his father. Sundays weren't complete without the Jim Kelly-led Bills on the TV and his dad, Bob Greco Sr., by his side. Back in the early days, Greco always dreamed of playing in Orchard Park. He was too young to understand his condition would never allow him to walk, let alone play the game he was falling more in love with every day.
Greco Sr., now the lead singer in the Bob Greco Band, was the lead singer in the Buffalo-based party band Nik and The Nice Guys for 18 years. The band played Super Bowl parties and Super Bowl pregame parties for the NFL, among other events. The band also regularly played for various Bills-related functions, be they player parties, charity events or other gatherings.
So when Greco was 5 years old, he got to meet Kelly, his hero and football idol, at one of Kelly's celebrity softball tournaments. Kelly, whose 8-year-old son Hunter died of globoid cell leukodystrophy in 2005, ended up talking to Greco. The minutes seemed like hours to the young Greco, who decided...
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