Calcaterra Commits To Colorado State

Sept 14

Kerry Rodd-NSO

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It is official! Cloquet star basketball player, Chad Calcaterra, has made a verbal commitment to play ball for Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado next season. Calcaterra, who has been courted by a number of Division I schools, made the decision on Sunday morning while visiting with Colorado State coach Tim Miles.

“He was pretty excited and had a look in his face like really,” said Calcaterra in an NSO exclusive interview. “He jumped up and gave me a big hug and said he was excited to have me play for Colorado State.”

Calcaterra comes from a basketball family. His father, John, has been a longtime basketball coach at all different levels and played basketball at Mesabi Range Community College and Northern Michigan University in Marquette.

“It was a huge relief to make the decision and get it out of the way,” commented Calcaterra. “It was like I had 50 pounds lifted off me. It just felt like the right place to go for basketball and the right place to go for my education.”

It is easier to understand how difficult this decision was once you find out the top schools that were after this 6′ 10″ center. The list was long, but included the University of Minnesota, North Dakota State University, Harvard, Vanderbilt, Colgate, Stanford, Cornell, Ball State, Liberty, Cornell, Auburn and UMD.

“It was really nice that UMD stayed in the mix with Chad,” explained Chad’s father John Calcaterra. “All along they said if things don’t work out somewhere else that we always had a place at UMD and that meant a lot to the family and I know to Chad as well.”

With a 3.94 grade point average, Calcaterra was able to get interest from colleges not only for his physical abilities, but also his classroom abilities. Yet, in the end, it was the chance to get the decision done early that worked in Colorado State’s favor.

“We wanted to get this done before the high school season,” commented John. “It has been quite the circus and Chad just wanted to get it done during the first signing which occurs in November.”

After graduating from high school in the spring, Calcaterra will head to Fort Collins and the Rocky Mountains. The Rams play in the Mountain West Conference against such teams as UNLV, Utah, BYU and New Mexico among others.

“I know I have to work on getting stronger and having more court awareness,” mentioned Chad. “I also had a lot of help on this whole thing from Cloquet High School coach Steve Battaglia. Coach helped me a lot and added a lot of guidance and gave me opinions on various things and that really helped a lot.”

Kerry Rodd can be reached at kerry@northlandsportsonline.com