There was actually a time when Bolingbrook’s 6-foot-8-inch, 335-pound Joe Szczepanik was undersized.
He was only 6 pounds 7 ounces at birth.
Then came one of those Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not growth spurts.
“He came out small and never stopped growing,” said his mother, Julie Szczepanik. “Joe went from newborn-size to 12-month-old clothes right away.”
At the age of 5, Szczepanik stood almost 5 feet tall and weighed 110 pounds. He was wearing adult clothes in the 4th grade, and two years later Mom could only shop for him at “big and tall” stores. Jumbo Joe was 5-11, 250 at the age of 11.
He was raised to be a pacifist, for fear he might hurt another child in a fight.
“That got to be rough, because all the other kids knew I wouldn’t fight back,” Szczepanik said. “I didn’t have a mean streak in me back then. Kids took advantage of that, teasing me and provoking me.
“I didn’t play tackle football for the first time until I was a freshman at Bolingbrook because I was always too big for the youth leagues. Football gave me self-confidence: I saw what I could do if I let my aggressions come out.”
A 5-8, 150-pound freshman classmate challenged the 6-5, 315-pound Szczepanik one day in the hallway. He smacked Szczepanik and took off, not realizing how quickly the big freshman could move.
“I ran him down and knocked him around a little bit,” Szczepanik said. “Word got around pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to take stuff from anyone. That’s all it took. I wanted to make it clear, and everybody knew. That part of my life where I would take abuse from others was done.”
These days, the massive offensive tackle, who is being most closely recruited by Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina State and Northwestern, is more of a peacemaker than anything else.
“When he steps in between two players, that altercation gets resolved real quickly,” Bolingbrook coach Phil Acton said. Two of every three Bolingbrook rushing touchdowns are scored behind Szczepanik’s blocking. He is even better in pass protection, having surrendered just one sack in three years.
In a recent game against Thornwood, Szczepanik drove the defensive tackle straight back into the linebacker and wound up knocking both players 10 yards downfield. He is strong enough to bench-press 400 pounds and smart enough to maintain a 3.5 grade-point average on a 4.0 scale.
Teammates elected him a captain last year as a junior, the first time that had happened at Bolingbrook in 23 years.
“Joe is a young kid who just turned 17 in August,” Acton said. “He was up to 365 after last season and did a great job getting his weight back down. He’s very strong but still has a lot of baby fat. Once he gets into a college weight-training program, look out.”
