Jacobs’ Matt Scardina tackles track with a passion

The football recruitment of Jacobs senior Matt Scardina had slowed to a saunter.

Smart, speedy and sculpted – “He looks like a Greek god,” one coach joked – Scardina received little interest from college football programs after finishing up his two-year varsity career last fall.

As an outside linebacker (and occasional running back), the 6-foot-2, 200-pound team captain piled up 65 tackles, including nine for loss, in earning All-Fox Valley Conference honors and helping the Golden Eagles capture seven wins and a Class 7A state playoff berth. He excelled as a safety his junior year.

“All the [NCAA Division-III] schools are looking at him, but I think some D-II and FCS schools really missed the boat on him,” Jacobs football coach Brian Zimmerman said. “He’s physical, he’s fast, and he can hunt people down, so I thought maybe he could be a great safety in college.”

The lack of interest from college football coaches hasn’t slowed down Scardina’s competitive drive. As a novice track sprinter, his speed has been so impressive that, actually, college football might now be in his rearview mirror.

“I was hoping to play football, but it’s all right,” Scardina said. “I fell in love with track. I love it a lot.”

Mind you, the past three springs, Scardina played baseball for Jacobs. The reality, however, was that hitting running backs was a lot easier than hitting curveballs. As a junior on the varsity last year, he played designated hitter and rotated in center field.

“I was doing pretty well [at baseball], until curveballs caught up to me,” Scardina said with a smile.

He’s tackled track, not surprisingly, with a vengeance. He turned heads so fast during the indoor season that those pressing a stopwatch button might have pulled a neck muscle. Scardina clocked times of 6.88 seconds in the 60-meter dash (fourth best in the state) and 22.06 in the 200 (ninth), and he hasn’t downshifted since moving outdoors.

In fact, he’s been picking up speed.

Scardina was named Athlete of the Meet in the McHenry County Meet at McHenry’s McCracken Field on Thursday after finishing first in the the 100 (10.99), 400 (personal-record 50.89) and 200 (personal-record 22.14) dashes, as Jacobs won the championship.

His emergence as a sprinter has landed him D-I track scholarship offers from Eastern Illinois and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. If he has an impressive final month of the season, more opportunities figure to follow for the student-athlete who boasts an unweighted 3.5 GPA.

“His top-end speed is pretty unbelievable,” said Zimmerman, who coaches Jacobs’ sprinters. “We’re working on his starts. If he can put it all together, I think he can be pretty special by the end of the season. We knew he’d be fast coming out, but we weren’t sure he’d be that fast.”

“He’s physical, he’s fast, and he can hunt people down, so I thought maybe he could be a great safety in college.”

—  Jacobs football coach Brian Zimmerman

Scardina was hoping to increase his speed, initially, to draw the interest of college football coaches, so he started training at TNT, a speed program, in Mount Prospect. He worked there with founder Tom Nelson, a former NFL safety for the Cincinnati Bengals and Philadelphia Eagles and a graduate of Hersey High School and Illinois State.

“He helped me gain two and a half miles per hour on my top speed in 12 weeks,” Scardina said.

Soon afterward, Scardina figured it might be time to hang up his baseball spikes and glove. He attends TNT once a week.

“(Nelson) told me I’d be decent at track, told me to try it,” Scardina said. “He helped me out with blocks, which helped me tremendously, shaved my time down in the 60 by about 2-10ths [of a second].”

The FVC Meet is May 15, and then the postseason starts. Beware of the linebacker, who will be hunting even faster times.

“I’m hoping to get down to the 10.6s for the 100 and 21.7 for the 200,” Scardina said.

Zimmerman knows speed isn’t the only thing the fast-rising Scardina offers.

“He brings something pretty special to the table for our track team,” Zimmerman said.

College track coaches – and maybe even college football coaches – are realizing it.