Former La Salle football and track star Carl Ricci, the 1991 Honor Roll boy, has found success as a prosecutor in the Rhode Island attorney general's office.

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 17, 2005

BY JOHN GILLOOLY
Journal Sports Writer

The story in the April 27 edition of the Journal described the drama Carl Ricci had created in the courtroom the previous day.

It told of how Ricci, the prosecutor in a highly publicized rape case, "extended his right arm, pointing at an image" of the defendant that was projected on a large white screen across the courtroom. The courtroom was silent, the story said.

Carl Ricci has always known how to create dramatic moments.

For four years, in the late '80s and early '90s, he created drama on high school football fields throughout Rhode Island.

A linebacker, he was one of the few players in La Salle football history to earn a varsity starting berth as a freshman. In his sophomore season, he was named second-team All-State, and by his junior season, he was not only a first-team All-Stater, but also was one of the best players in the state.

As a senior, he earned honorable-mention All-American honors.

By football standards he wasn't big, only 5-foot-11 and a little over 200 pounds. But as former La Salle football coach Art Fiore said back in 1991, he had "a mystical blend of tremendous athletic ability, superior intelligence and great attitude and desire."

He also had an amazing work ethic.

"This year as a senior and All-Stater, he still outworked every football player in our program," Fiore recalled back in the fall of 1990.

Ricci worked equally hard in the classroom. He finished his high school career with a 91 average. So nobody was surprised when Ricci, who also was a state shot put and discus champion, was named the 1991 Journal Honor Roll Boy.

Like most high school football stars, he had dreamed of someday playing for a national college title. But even in 1991, big-time Division I programs didn't come looking for 5-11, 200-pound linebackers.

"They liked my speed and my football instincts, but they were concerned about my size," Ricci once said about the Division I-A coaches who talked to him during his senior year.

So he took his football talent and intellect to Yale.

There were some people who said he was even too small to play Ivy League football, especially as a linebacker. But it didn't take Ricci long to conquer both the challenge of playing Ivy League football and fitting in at one of the most prestigious academic institutions.

During the 1992 season he became one of the few sophomores to ever start for former long-time Yale football coach Carmen Cozza. That season, he led the team in tackles, sacks and fumbles caused.

He also learned that he wasn't just a Yale football player, he was a Yale student.

"In my freshman year, all of the other guys I played with had either one guy who was a football player or a baseball player as a roommate. My roommates were all in the band," said Ricci. "They were all super smart. One night, we were going around the room saying something about ourselves. I remember saying maybe I don't belong here because they all had 1,500 SATs. I had good SATs, but they weren't 1,500. They all said 'of course you do.' "

Would I have gotten into Yale if I wasn't a football player? Maybe not, but Yale was looking for a community of well-rounded, excellent people and I think I was as qualified to go to Yale as any student there."

Prior to the start of his senior year he became the first Rhode Islander to be elected football captain in the 110-year history of Yale football.

He didn't just provide dramatic moments at the Yale Bowl during his college career. He returned to Rhode Island for a game against Brown in his senior season and led Yale to 27-16 victory by intercepting three passes and making numerous tackles. By the time he finished his college career, he was one of Yale's career leaders in tackles.

In his senior year, he took a course in constitutional law that started him thinking about a legal career.

But when your life revolved around football for the eight years since you entered high school, it's not easy breaking away from the game. So he tried to become a graduate assistant coach, but there were no offers.

"I sent a lot of letters out, but the big schools had been cut down to two graduate assistants and basically they took the guys who had played for them. It didn't work out and it probably was for the best," said Ricci.

So he spent a year after graduation doing social work for the Connecticut state department of family services before enrolling at Boston University Law School.

"My first year (of law school) was a tough transition," said Ricci who is now married and the father of a 2-year-old son. "The year after I graduated (from Yale) I was still in New Haven. I still went to the games. People knew who you were. Now I was in Boston where nobody knew me. It was tough because I had always been identified as a student-athlete. In high school and college, you were always an athlete. That's what you were. You get up and went to school, but right after school there always was a practice or a game or a workout. I knew I was finished physically, but mentally it was tough. I wasn't sure what my identity was any more."

But eventually he began directing his efforts toward the law with the same zeal that he had gone after opposing quarterbacks and running backs.

He graduated from law school in the spring of 1999 and took the bar exam a few months later. By the following fall, he was a member of the state Attorney General's staff.

Few people in a courtroom these days know that he is one of the most accomplished football players in Rhode Island history. He never talks about the fact that he once was an All-Ivy selection and an ECAC all-star. He doesn't carry around the program for the 1994 Yale-Harvard game that has the picture of him and the Harvard captain on the cover.

But in a sense, the courtroom is the playing field of law. So maybe it's not surprising that the former Honor Roll Boy is still helping his team post some big victories.