Menu options about to expand for LZ's Castonzo

Not much has changed about Anthony Castonzo since he first started eating “meatloaf men” and “orange smiles” as a kid.

For his entire college career, the 2006 Lake Zurich High School graduate swallowed up plenty of men … with a satisfied smile. Defensive linemen, that is.

Now, he'll be counted on to do the same thing in the NFL.

Castonzo, who has started on the offensive line for the last four years at Boston College, is projected to be a first-round selection in next week's NFL draft.

No other former football player from Lake County, un-recruited out of high school, has ever been drafted in the NFL's first round before, a distinction for Castonzo that will be celebrated at a party with his friends and family during the NFL Network's live draft coverage on Thursday.

Perhaps meatloaf and oranges will be on the menu, along with plenty of other goodies that will help Castonzo reach the 7,000-calorie benchmark he tries to hit each day as he gets his 6-foot-7, 311-pound frame even more NFL ready.

“My mom is an excellent cook,” Castonzo said of his mother Shari, who along with husband Bill, owns Oregano's Italian restaurant in Lake Zurich. “Sometimes when I was a kid she would shape her meatloaf into different objects to be funny. She did ‘meatloaf men' a lot. Sometimes she'd even give the men a little meatloaf dog or something.”

Having fun with food seems to be a theme here, because whenever Castonzo ate oranges as a kid, he liked to cut them into quarter slices, leave the rinds on and shove an entire piece into his mouth.

When he smiled, Castonzo would have an “orange smile.”

“Anthony has been doing that kind of stuff for as long as I've known him, even into high school,” laughed high school friend and teammate Kevin Sweeney, who is now an assistant football coach at Lake Zurich. “He'd make omelet faces with bacon eyebrows. Funny stuff like that.

“I think he's still eating ‘meatloaf men' even today. Anthony has always been like this big little kid. He still is. He hasn't changed at all.”

Castonzo is now a really, really big kid who is living out the dreams of many little kids. Certainly those of his own.

In fact, Castonzo was so certain of his dream to be an NFL player that he put it in writing way back when he was in junior high.

“We had this assignment just before we were to graduate from eighth grade to write down a couple of things you wanted to do in your life,” Sweeney said. “The point was to see how on target you were by the time you were ready to graduate from high school. You were supposed to seal the paper in an envelope and not look at it until your senior year.

“I remember the day we got to open those envelopes and Anthony showed me his. It said that he wanted to play football in the NFL and cure cancer. Looking back at that now, it's amazing how on track he is.”

One of the brightest students in his class at Lake Zurich, Castonzo went on to major in biochemistry at Boston College. His goal is to get a doctorate degree after his playing days so that he can dedicate the rest of his life to cancer research.

“I never met my grandpa. He died (of cancer) before I was even born,” Castonzo said. “When I was younger and I first thought about what I wanted to do for a career, I thought about how I love math and science and how I could use that to help find a cure for cancer.

“Cancer traps people. People who have cancer can't really do anything about it and some of them never get a chance to make their dreams come true. That upsets me and I really want to change that. Everyone deserves the chance to live their dreams.”

For now, Castonzo is going to concentrate on living out his other lifelong dream, a dream that was almost snuffed out before he even got to high school.

Castonzo may be 6-foot-7, 300-plus pounds and athletic now, but he was far from an NFL prospect even as a senior in high school.

He started as a non-descript freshman who was barely 5-feet-10, and was often teased for his lack of coordination and athleticism.

“Back then, Anthony was the kind of kid who you wondered if he could walk and chew gum at the same time,” Sweeney said with a chuckle. “When he ran, his arms and legs kind of flailed all over the place. Anthony took a lot of crap for that.”

Longtime friend and former teammate Nick Summers also remembers those days well. But he remembers how Castonzo handled them even better.

“Anthony certainly had humble beginnings and people would take shots at him, make fun of him sometimes for being small or not running very well,” echoed Summers, who is also now an assistant football coach at Lake Zurich. “He had a lot of people tell him that he couldn't do this, or he couldn't do that. But what Anthony did is he took that and used it as motivation.

“It was an uphill battle for him but he never stopped believing in himself. It was like he had this plan and he always kept that in front of him. Anthony is going far beyond everyone's expectations … except for his own.”

Even an injury, and lack of playing time, wouldn't deter Castonzo.

He sat out his sophomore year at Lake Zurich with a serious knee injury and played only sparingly as a junior because there were more talented and experienced seniors in front of him.

Even though Castonzo had sprouted up to his current height by his senior year and started every varsity game, he was still so raw and green that he didn't receive a single scholarship offer from any Division I colleges.

But that didn't stop Castonzo either.

“I just always knew I had it in me (to play in college and beyond),” Castonzo said. “I wasn't getting any (big-time) looks my senior year, not even from Illinois and my dad played there (as an offensive lineman). But I wasn't ready to give up on my dream.”

In fact, Castonzo resorted to enrolling in an East Coast military prep school simply to get one last shot at grooming himself for a Division I offer.

“I was willing to put in countless hours in the weight room. I was willing to do whatever it took to get bigger and better, and I did that,” Castonzo said. “I also knew that I was a late-bloomer, that I was still not totally developed in high school because I wasn't even shaving yet. I knew I could put on a lot more weight.

“My dad always told me that when everything did finally kick in for me, he'd hate to be the guy across from me. He knew that I could get there, and so did I.”

After turning all kinds of heads at prep school and receiving dozens of Division I scholarship offers, Castonzo settled on Boston College and walked right into a starting spot as a true freshman.

He logged more than 50 starts over his college career and became so well-respected for his work ethic, textbook technique and superior physical fitness (what other offensive lineman do you know with a six-pack?) that he will likely be the very first offensive lineman taken in the draft.

“I just feel so proud right now,” Summers said. “Being from Lake Zurich, having played in high school with Anthony and being his friend, you're just so proud that one of your own is excelling at this level. It's just awesome.

“Right now, you couldn't blame Anthony if he was like ‘Ha!' Everyone who has ever been told ‘You can't do this, you can't do that' as much as he was has to have a little bit of that in them. He's got a great story of how you can reach your goals by believing in yourself and by keeping a positive attitude, no matter what anyone else says.

“Now, he's the biggest thing that's ever come out of Lake Zurich.”

Castonzo doesn't seem likely to get caught up in the hype, though.

With parents who own their own business and three older siblings who all played sports in college (Bill, football at Drake), Kristyn (softball at Tennessee Tech) and Carissa (softball at Lewis), Castonzo was brought up with healthy doses of hard work and humility.

In fact, he says he's still so concerned about working out hard to keep his edge that he hasn't even given any thought as to what his first splurge will be with his hefty NFL contract.

“Ummmm, that's hard,” Castonzo said. “I don't really think I need to splurge on anything. A modest house will be fine. And the only car I need is one that fits me.

“But if I did splurge on something, I guess maybe I'd splurge on a personal chef. I love food, you know. That and football. That's pretty much all I do. I eat, work out and play football.

“I tell everyone, I'm living the dream.”

He's living it now, but Castonzo has been believing in it forever.

pbabcock@dailyherald.com