By Jeff Vorva
Manteno resident Tony Pashos is now a Lockport Legend.
The former football player joined 20 other alumni of Lockport Township High School in an inaugural hall-of-fame-like ceremony dubbed the Lockport Legends on July 26 at Mistwood Golf Club in Romeoville.
“It was surreal,” Pashos said of finding out about the honor.
The 6-foot-6 Pashos went on to play at Illinois and was a first-team All-Big Ten selection twice while he was in Champaign and in 2001, he helped anchor an Illini line that allowed the offense to score 390 points and 5,041 total offensive yards.
He parlayed that into an NFL career that lasted 11 years with Baltimore, Jacksonville San Fransisco and Oakland.
In all, he played 104 NFL games with 82 starts.
He also obtained a law degree and is currently an assistant football coach at McNamara.
As a coach, he has an even better understanding of the coaching that he received in high school.
“I appreciated them as best as I could back then,” he said of his coaches. “But as I age more, I look back and say ‘Holy cow, I was blessed. They worked as hard as they could for us.
“When you become an adult and you start coaching, then you realize how much the coaches did for me. I hope I can be as half as good as them.”
Ava dazzles
Beecher’s Ava Lorenzatti had a chance to show off her talents in the Premier Girls Fastpitch Futures All-American Game on July 27 at Huntington Beach, California.
Lorenzatti, who will be a senior in the fall, threw a scoreless third inning and singled to left in the showcase, which was televised on ESPN-Plus.