After Otto Zaccardo graduated from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional (Massachusetts) High School, he wasn’t a fan of what he saw.

He had some Division II offers, others from Division I-AA, but he thought he could play at the highest level, Division I.

So he gambled on himself, enrolling at Worcester (Massachusetts) Academy to play a post-graduate year at running back for Hilltoppers. But three or four games into the season, he said, he dislocated his AC joint, meaning his shoulder separated from his clavicle.

He missed the remainder of the season.

“It’s been a chaotic process,” Zaccardo said, laughing.

The preferred walk-on running back listed at 5-foot-10, 180 pounds, per his Hudl.com account, committed to the Orange via Twitter on Friday night. The Class of 2016 commit chose SU over multiple Division I-AA and Ivy League offers, he said. Before Worcester, he ran for 1,127 yards and 14 touchdowns in his senior year of high school, per the Sudbury Town Crier newspaper.

“I knew about the situation at Syracuse from a lot of reading and knew they needed fast guys,” he said of SU head coach Dino Babers’ new fast-paced plan on offense. “I reached out to them and they got back to me immediately.”

Buying into the mantra, “Orange is the new fast,” Zaccardo emailed his highlight tape, which by then consisted of mostly plays over a year old because of his injury, to every coach he could find on the team’s site in late January. He said he had run the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds the summer before, so that helped get the attention of coaches.

Within a few days, new defensive quality control coach John Pike had responded. After talking consistently, Zaccardo came to campus for a visit last weekend and was impressed by how well organized Babers’ staff was for being there only two months.

“I visited (the University of California) a while ago,” he said. “I honestly thought Syracuse had better facilities.”

Zaccardo said he’s been accepted into the Renée Crown University Honors Program at Syracuse, and the merit scholarships he earned made it possible to walk-on.

He said he will focus on special teams and being on the scout team for this fall and then enter the next spring like anyone else.

The Twitter account that Zaccardo announced his decision on had been made just a few days before, and his decision was just his second tweet. There isn’t a lot about him on the internet other than a few old articles because he said he isn’t into social media.

“Plus, I got injured early (at Worcester) so there was nothing to report on,” Zaccardo said. “But there will be.”

Published on April 9, 2016 at 9:39 pm

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