Isaiah McKenzie’s Olympic flag football dream runs through Nutley High School

This spring, Isaiah McKenzie arrived in town with one clear goal to impact his new community between practices. He found that opportunity in Nutley, N.J.

The 5-foot-7, 173-pound veteran wide receiver and return specialist had just signed after one season in Indianapolis, four in Buffalo, and a little more than one in Denver. McKenzie, a Miami native, got to talking with Ethan Medley, the Giants’ director of community relations and youth football, and the topic of flag football came up.

McKenzie is well-versed in the sport. He played it and also coached girls at Downtown Doral Charter Upper School in South Florida for four years. Upon discovering this, Medley had just the person for him to see. So, he walked him down to Carmen Pizzano, the team’s assistant video director who has been with the organization for 28 seasons.

“I was sitting in my office, E comes in, I’ve got my back towards him,” Pizzano recalled. “He’s like, ‘Hey, Carm, Isaiah wants to help out. He wants to coach flag football.’ I’m like, ‘Huh, Isaiah who?’ I turn around, and he’s standing right there.”

Pizzano’s daughter, Gianna, was in the final stretch of her senior year at Nutley High School, located five miles away from the Quest Diagnostics Training Center. She was a captain of the flag football team and part of a generation that rode (and created) the first wave of the sport’s growth at the high school level.

“Working here with the Giants for so long – Gianna is my oldest and I have a 14-year-old son (Luciano) now playing football – I always envisioned trying to ask these guys to help out and just come show up to a practice,” Pizzano said. “I never envisioned one of them actually coaching. He wanted to coach.”

Pizzano relayed the idea to Joe Piro, the school’s athletic director, after one of Gianna’s practices. Piro didn’t blink at the chance to have a seven-year NFL veteran on the sideline of one of his Raiders teams – and a committed one at that.

“He was living in Clifton and didn’t have a car, so he was taking Ubers to practice, Ubers going home, Ubers to away games,” Pizzano said. “The games he couldn’t come to, he’s texting me every quarter, ‘How did we do? What’s the score?’ He’ll be on a plane sitting there and texting me wanting to know how the girls are doing. He was all in right from the start.”

When he first met the team, both sides admitted they were a little shy, which may come as a surprise because that is one word people would not use to describe the energetic professional athlete.

But one thing came through loud and clear: the team was all in. McKenzie was taken aback by the seriousness of the operation. It wasn’t just one student dragging her friends there, which McKenzie had seen before.

“I come up here and Nutley has a quarterback, a receiver, they’ve got little running backs,” McKenzie said. “I’m like, they’ve got a complete team.”