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Giorgio Tavecchio is the 14th Italian to play in the National Football League. Before him Ralph D. Vince, Giovanni A. Bonadies, Giuseppe "Scanlon" Santone and Rocco Segretta in the 1920s; Giuseppe "Jumping Joe" Savoldi and Domenico Cara in the 1930s; Enio Conti, Bruno Banducci, Francesco Gaziano and Pietro Gorgone in the 1940s; Leo Nomellini in the...

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Rowing Erin Cafaro (1983, Modesto, CA), NCAA rowing champion in 2005 and 2006. Gold medal with the 4 without (4-) of the U.S. team at the Under 23 World Championships in Amsterdam 2005. Always with the national team but 4 light, Erin won a gold at the 2006 World Cup in Munich. Cafaro also boasts 2 gold medals at the 2008 Beijing and 2004 London...

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The Italian American sportswomen have left a luminous trail in the American sports, either in the most popular disciplines and in those less practiced or far from the front pages of newspapers and TV programming.   Baseball  In 1942, Philip Wrigley (owner of the Chicago Cubs) financed an analysis about the project to create a women's baseball champ...

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In Randall's Island, the US national team is preparing for the World Cup in Brazil. These are exciting days, a little underestimated by the rest of the country: soccer in the Fifties is an ethnic sport discipline, little space in the media, few means available. In the group of athletes led by coach Bill Jeffy there are five Italian Americans: Nicho...

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Peter Renzulli (born in 1895 in New York), goalkeeper, in the 1920-21 season began playing in the semi-pro tournament NAFBL (National Association Football League) with the Brooklyn Robins Dry Dock, who faced 7 other teams from New York, Bethlehem, Kearney, Philadelphia. Harrison, Bayonne and Bunker Hill. In the same years there were other territori...

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Raffaello "Ralph" DePalma (born in Italy in 1883 in Troia, Puglia) arrived in Brooklyn together with his parents in 1891. The very young Pugliese American began to work as apprentice in a food shop, delivering by bicycle home deliveries. Then the first money arrived, together with dreams and a used bike powered by motor, and then the first races an...

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After the establishment in 1892 of the first important hockey trophy, the Stanley Cup, in the early years of the new century hockey had already gained popularity not only in Canada but also in the United States where, between 1901 and 1904, the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League and the International Pro Hockey League were founded, the first two en...

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Since 1891, when in Shinnecock Hills, Long Island, the first permanent American course was established (including the spacious club house, despite the fact that there were only 12 players at first), golf in the US has definitely made giant leaps forward. The United States Golf Association was founded in 1894 and, in the same year, it organized the...

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“The Italians were better fitted for games of quickness, dexterity, and skill, rather than rugged strength, and were too fiery and impulsive of feeling for contact sports”. Compared to American athletes, Italians' “tendency to the extreme of elation, or to the opposite extreme of despondency” made them “fearless, daring, and reckless” but also “mor...

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In the 1950s the NFL continued to expand. The Cleveland Browns, the dominant team of the AAFC competing league that during the decade in the league, won the NFL title in 1950 on their first participation. In 1951, after a stop that lasted from 1942, the Pro Bowl came back. In 1953 the racial policies of the league were challenged by a Federal Court...

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