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Rolling Meadows' Garoppolo picks Eastern Illinois

Jimmy Garoppolo gave the Eastern Illinois football coaching staff a surprise treat with their Sunday morning breakfast.

The Rolling Meadows senior quarterback verbally committed to the Panthers during his weekend recruiting visit to Charleston. Garoppolo chose Eastern over scholarship offers from Illinois State and Montana State.

Eastern Illinois associate head coach and offensive coordinator Roy Wittke started recruiting the 6-foot-3, 208-pound Garoppolo at the end of Meadows' season. Garoppolo was also impressed with head coach Bob Spoo when they met this weekend.

"I've always liked the coaches since the first day I met them," Garoppolo said. "They're a lot like me. They're calm and they don't seem like coaches who are going to scream at you if you do something wrong."

Garoppolo played quarterback during the last two of his three seasons as a varsity starter at Meadows. He was an all-area pick as a senior as he completed 56 percent of his passes for 1,888 yards and 16 touchdowns and rushed for 563 yards and 7 touchdowns for the Mid-Suburban East champions.

Garoppolo hopes to have an early impact with an Eastern Illinois team that was 8-4 last year and lost in the first round of the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) playoffs to Southern Illinois.

"The (pro-style) offensive system seems pretty good and they have a lot of guys returning next year," Garoppolo said. "I have a pretty legitimate chance to start, maybe not next year, but the year after that and I don't want to ride the bench for four years.

"I'm happy with Eastern. It's everything I wanted in a school and a football program."

Garoppolo is also happy the process is over as he joins his brother Mike, a redshirt sophomore linebacker at Western Illinois, as a Division I football player.

"It's a great feeling," said Jimmy Garoppolo, who has a 4.0 grade-point average on a 5.0 scale, scored 21 on the ACT and plans to study business. "To be able to relax and know where you're going next year and not have all these questions running through your head, it's a huge relief.

"But it was a great experience to go through and I'm glad it all happened."