Renner reflects on his time coaching in Italy
Ex-McDaniel assistant saw promising season cut down
Colin Renner’s football coaching journey has taken him on quite the trip.
The Taneytown native and former athlete at McDonogh School worked as a student assistant coach at McDaniel College, and wound up on staff in 2016. Renner also coached at Franklin & Marshall before spending 2019 in Lake Placid, Florida, as a high school offensive coordinator.
Several years ago, Renner heard about former colleague Greg Tellish, a South Carroll grad who was part of the Green Terror staff at the time, and his adventures playing football in Finland. The notion of coaching in Europe never left Renner, and he said he maintained a profile on a popular website that generates a search for American players and coaches.
Then came a phone call from Dan Pippin, a former longtime successful high school coach in South Carolina, who had recently taken over as coach of the Lazio Ducks in Italy.
“He just asked me, how would I like to live and work and coach in Rome?” Renner said. “That’s something that was really appealing to me. The location, No. 1. It’s kind of hard to beat Rome. They put a good package together, and I kind of liked the offer they had in place. It’s a chance to go to Italy for free and have all your expenses paid.”
Renner’s journey hit a snag this spring, however, when the coronavirus pandemic struck Italy and turned a promising career move into a serious health concern. Lazio’s season never got started in March, and Renner, 27, found himself wondering what he had gotten into.
Renner said the Ducks had several practices during the preseason, and the mix of Americans and Italians was a good one (each team’s roster in the Italian Federation of American Football league includes three Americans). Lazio has one team in the first division, Renner said, and another in the third division, one that is built in developmental style.
Renner said the Ducks’ third division team grabbed a win March 1 in Naples. One week later, the FIDAF (Federazione Italiana Di American Football) suspended all games through the end of the month. A few days after that, all of Italy was in lockdown mode.
“Most of the teams are in the north of Italy in our league, we’re the only team kind of in the south,” Renner said. “But the north was much harder hit. So that was sort of the first stage, but it just kept changing. … Every day was something new.”
Italy’s confirmed cases of coronavirus recently surpassed 135,000, according to reports, and the death toll eclipsed 17,000. Football soon became secondary, Renner said, despite Lazio’s committed bunch in the first division.
“European football is sort of a mixed bag,” he said. “There are some teams that do it right, and some teams that do it wrong. And the Lazio Ducks were definitely a team that did it the right way.”
Renner said the Ducks were gunning for the Milan Seamen, winners of the past three league titles and five of the last six. Milan defeated Lazio in the semifinals last spring. This year’s Ducks had something going, Renner said, with a good mix of American coaches and players, and eager Italians.
“We had doctors and laywers, one guy was a Disney animator,” Renner said of Lazio’s native players. “It was a really interesting group of people to work with and coach. We had players all the way up into their 40s. And some real genuine talent too. We looked pretty good. … So everything gets rolling, and really then it’s kind of a rapid switch.”
Restaurants around Rome that were open for take-out only suddenly closed,
Renner said. People using mass transit went from a regular morning commute to donning protective masks in the afternoon.
“They went so far as to have military and police checkpoints,” Renner said. “You had to have official papers to leave your house or your apartment. And you could be stopped at any time, and they’d check your papers. You risked a pretty serious fine, or even jail time if you were lying about why you were out.”
Renner heard from fellow Americans on teams in northern Italy about how rapidly the virus was spreading, but said he knew things were serious when Lazio’s front office notified him and his fellow American coaches the morning of March 12, telling them there was one flight remaining back to the United States — leaving in four hours. After a “mad scramble” to get packed and make it to the airport in time, Renner and others got out in time.
“It was very odd coming back to the U.S. when I did, because I sort of saw things happening all over again,” he said. “Like
deja vu.”
Renner said he self-quarantined for two weeks when he made it back to Carroll County, but he was taken aback when nobody working at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York decided to run checks on the travelers who arrived from Italy.
Still, Renner said he’d make plans to return should the Italian football season resume. He called the experience great, and said his coaching IQ increased because he had to work through teaching American rules, a language barrier, and measurement differences.
“I remember the first time I asked somebody to run a 5-yard hitch, and their hand goes up. ‘Coach, what is a yard?’ ” Renner said. “So I had to change all of my terminology into steps.”
Renner said he is headed to South Carolina in the fall for another high school job as an offensive coordinator at a private school, but he would consider traveling overseas once again if Lazio comes calling. Another chance to interact and connect with the Italian football players might be enticing, Renner said.
“Everything over there was first class,” he said. “It was a really dedicated group of guys. When you’re an American over there, you’re sort of looked at as the guy with all the answers. That’s what they’re bringing you there for, to grow their knowledge of the game.
“To play football over there as a native, you really have to love football. So you could tell that those guys, that’s really what they cared about. That was their passion.”