Louie Chappetto ’24 was the starting kicker for Mount Carmel’s varsity football team for three seasons. After graduating this past spring, the Caravan felt his lack of presence on the gridiron. The coaching staff immediately began looking for a replacement.
With no internal options, the search began. Head Coach Jordan Lynch set his sights on the soccer team, looking to poach one of their fútbolers.
Senior and now three-sport varsity athlete Nico Mullen had been recruited to cross over by Coach Lynch for a while, but after Chappetto’s departure, Mullen finally caved to the coach’s requests.
Despite this being his first year kicking a football at the high school level, the newest piece of the team has been a well-performing, yet green, Mullen.
He is still new to the mechanics of the sport, though, and he keeps a newbie’s humility. “Yeah I just go out there and kick the ball where they tell me to,” said Mullen. “Then they tell me I do a good job. It all works out.”
His coaches have shown that they respect Mullen for how well he’s transitioned into being the team’s starting kicker, even if he is still new to the sport.
“He didn’t really understand everything about American football at first,” said varsity special teams coordinator Frank Lenti, Jr. “When we kicked the field goal with a minute forty left in the Hun game he brought a ball out there with him. He didn’t really understand that you use the ball that’s out there already. That was a pretty funny sight.”
What Mullen lacks in experience, he makes up for in raw talent.
“We’ve been very pleased with him,” said Coach Lenti. “Go figure–the first game [against New Jersey’s Hun Academy] when all we were asking of him was to put us in a good position, he made a thirty plus yard field goal with a minute forty left.”
Teachers and students have also started to take notice. It’s not just the coaches telling him he’s doing a good job.
“More people have been nice to me, more people sitting by me at school,” said Mullen. “I just keep doing it because the people seem to appreciate it, and they’ve been really nice about it.”
With his being needed on the football field comes a cost, though. As much as everyone would like him to be more free, he has a tight and full schedule. This has been a bit of a point of contention with the whole ordeal of Mullen playing both football and soccer during the fall sports season. Overlapping game schedules have resulted in Mullen having to make difficult choices.
“A lot of people want me at two places at once,” he said. “The football team will be like, ‘Why are you leaving, bro? We need you.’ Then I got the soccer team questioning my loyalty.”
One of his coaches has noticed that the constant pull in multiple directions can have an effect on the senior.
“He plays soccer, he plays football, he plays baseball,” said Mr. Antonio Godinez, head coach of the varsity soccer team and MC Spanish teacher. “I think he can just be a little hard on himself mentally, and he’s got a lot of responsibility now, so it can get his head out of the game a little bit.”
Though things can be a little rough around the edges with Mullen at times, coaches in all three of his sports still view him as a leader. One has even been recently drawing some fascinating parallels.
“Crazy enough, the last three sport athlete I coached was [2018 graduate and current Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder] Alek Thomas,” said Mr. Brian Hurry, head coach of the varsity baseball team and MC social studies teacher. “And that’s some pretty good company. The thing that stands out to me is they’re obviously both really good athletes, but also very good academically. If you’re gonna play three sports you have to have good time management skills. You have to balance doing your homework and doing sports all school year long.”
Mullen has done his best as a rookie this year with integrating himself into the team, and that’s all one can ask for.
“It’s all about being a great teammate, which Nico is,” said Coach Hurry. “It’s all about team.”
