Joe Panozzo wasn’t sure what to think when his mother Josephine handed him a letter from The University of Northern Iowa earlier this month.

The former Panther and Rochelle Township High School alum thought it was just another plea for money, and his original plan was to throw the letter away. But after further review, Panozzo was shocked to learn that UNI had selected him for induction into the Athletic Hall of Fame.  

“I’m incredibly thrilled and honored,” said Panozzo, who will be inducted as a member of the 1977-78 men’s wrestling team. “I called the athletic director after I got the letter… I thought it was a mistake because I receive all these letters for fundraising and the letter was sent to my mom’s address instead of mine. But I opened it up and I was shocked.”

Panozzo will be enshrined this fall, joining the likes of other Northern Iowa graduates including former NFL quarterback and Pro Football Hall of Famer Kurt Warner. But Panozzo’s path wasn’t always clear. Once a lost student at RTHS, Panozzo admitted there was a time where he had trouble finding his way.

“I didn’t go out for wrestling as a freshman,” he said. “My grades weren’t very good and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I always wanted to go to college but my grades were terrible. When I first joined wrestling I was kind of a smart aleck.”

That’s when he met former RTHS coaches Pete Fader and Mike Scanlan, who Panozzo said were the two greatest influences on him as a high-schooler. The two men helped Panozzo improve in the classroom, and they pushed him to become a better wrestler as well. With his newfound confidence, Panozzo began participating in other sports, and by the time he graduated RTHS in 1975, he had competed in baseball, track and golf in addition to wrestling.

“I remember going over to their houses during football season and watching games with them,” Panozzo said. “I don’t know if kids do that nowadays, but they treated their homes like ours… We’d watch football and talk about wrestling, and it gave me a sense of focus. My grades starting getting better and everything starting turning around for me.”

Looking to continue his wrestling career at the college level, Panozzo visited a few schools including Louisiana State University, The University of Illinois and Eastern Illinois University. But it wasn’t until Panozzo journeyed to Northern Iowa that his passion for wrestling matched the competitive culture shared by the university, and while he admitted he wasn’t a frontline wrestler for the Panthers, he knew he had found his home.

“I wanted to go somewhere that wrestling mattered,” he said. “I thought about how great it would be to wrestle one time in front of 13,000 people, and the compromise to that was Northern Iowa. Their athletic facilities were phenomenal. I don’t think we had less than 5,000 people per meet watching us. Iowa’s a big wrestling state and it seemed like a good place to go.”

Panozzo continued to maintain good grades at Northern Iowa, and he said his plan was to become a wrestling coach before he said he transitioned to studying business. He graduated with a business management degree in 1979, and today Panozzo lives in West Branch, Iowa, working at ACT in Iowa City.

His wrestling days may be roughly 40 years behind him, but he said the lessons he learned, both at RTHS and Northern Iowa, are some he will carry with him for the rest of his life.

“I can transfer everything good about wrestling over to my life,” Panozzo said. “I discovered humility and an intestinal fortitude to stick with it. I was going nowhere as a freshman in high school and I think both of my parents would agree to that, but coach Fader and coach Scanlan taught me discipline, and I became more disciplined in college.”