“It’s been a tough ride for me,” admitted Cocio, who’ll be the Marauders new starting quarterback when they open the season Saturday against Quincy University at McPherson Stadium. “It’s been a real tough ride at times.”
At 15, Cocio suddenly found himself on his own.
He said during the middle of one of his basketball games as a sophomore, his dad was arrested and ended up in prison.
Soon after that he said his mom was dealing with some issues and they had a serous falling out. He left home and ended up bouncing from one place to another.
He lived for a while with the parents of his girlfriend, Brittany Massa. Then he stayed at the home of one friend, and after that, moved in with another.
Finally, when he was 19, he headed to Merced College, a community college near his home in Atwater. and got an apartment of his own.
In the process, he showed some prescience in coping with his situation.
“Look, life goes on,” he said. “You can either choose to be sad and mope around or you can be happy and look forward to the next day.
“Either way, life doesn’t care how you’re feeling. It keeps going.”
To adopt that philosophy, he needed to find some sound footing amidst all the turbulence and flux.
“Football and school were the only two consistent things in my life and I wanted consistency,” he said.
And he embraced both.
He said he eventually had a 3.5 grade point average at Atwater High School and senior year, on a team that won just two games, he threw for 1,084 yards in nine games.
He said he planned to quit football after high school, go to work, take some college classes and he and Massa would begin to plan their lives together
Invited to a postseason all-star game – the final football effort of his career, he figured – he “showed out” big time his uncle and mentor, Gabriel “Gabe” Cocio, said:
“On his very first play he threw a 70-yard touchdown pass.”
He ended the game throwing for 277 yards and three TDs and afterward he was approached by the Merced coaches, who told him they thought he could play for them.
They were right.
Initially redshirted, he was thrust into the lineup after the starter was lost to injury and the backup was booted off the team.
Taking over a 2-3 squad, he led the Blue Devils to six straight victories and the school’s first winning season in 20 years.
The following year he guided Merced to a 9-2 record and finished his career with 3,641 passing yards and 43 touchdowns in just 17 games.
In the process he also got his associates degree. Now on scholarship at CSU, he hopes to be school teacher once his football is done.
On the CSU campus just a month, he’s been embraced by the team said head coach Cedric Pearl:
“No 1, he’s just a great kid. You could tell that already the first week he was here. The other players took to him right away. He’s been just outstanding.”
Committed to CSU
Cocio – known as Frank here, but Frankie when he played at Merced – said his roots are a mixture of “Mexican, Native American (Navajo) and, I believe, there’s some Italian in there, too.”
His dad first got him playing football, but because there were no peewee teams in the area, he said he played with 10 and 11 year olds when he was six.
By high school he had packed 240 pounds on what would become a 6-foot-1 ½ inch frame. He played some linebacker too and he loved to hit people his uncle said:
“I remember one game a guy intercepted his pass and Frankie went after him. He tackled him hard and the guy never did come back into the game.”
While his size enabled him to deliver some punishment, it also attracted some verbal hits, as well.
“There were times I was called fat. A couple of girls teased me that I had man (breasts). Some coaches called me the JaMarcus Russell of Atwater,” he said in reference to the disappointing Oakland Raiders quarterback, who had been the top pick in the 2007 draft but saw his brief career spiral downward as his weight ballooned to 300 pounds.
I was eating fast food, burgers, fries, pizza, nachos…but once I got to college I was working out twice a day and, because there were no scholarships, I didn’t have a lot of money to eat all the time,” Cocio said.
He began to lose weight and today weighs around 203, he said.
As the pounds fell away, the stats piled up and his performances caught the attention of Pearl, who knew he needed a replacement for graduating senior Trent Mays, the All-SIAC quarterback who in two seasons had thrown for 3,700 yards and 20 touchdowns and run for another 489 yards and 11 scores, but was a controversial addition to the campus because of a nasty sexual assault incident when he was at Steubenville High School.
While a few other schools set their sights on Cocio, Pearl recruited him heavily, convinced him to visit the campus and promptly offered him a scholarship.
After watching the 5-5 Marauders close out last season with a 45-22 victory over Lane College, Cocio decided he wanted to come to CSU:
“They were the only school who wanted to give me a visit and they stuck with me through the hard times. Central State showed they were committed to me, so I wanted to be committed to them.”
‘It’s really green out here’
He’ll take over a Central State offense that’s without its top receiver from last season, Kevin Greenhow, the SIAC Newcomer of the Year, who had 34 catches for 880 yards and nine touchdowns in just eight games. Greenhow is not available for competition this season, CSU said.
But there are some prime targets this year, including all conference tight end Robert Corbin and transfer receivers Dalane Brown II (Hocking C.C.) and Derell Williams (Tiffin.)
Cocio, who’s under the tutelage of CSU quarterbacks coach James Hudgins, said: “It’s the first time in my career I’ve had a quarterbacks coach. I’m definitely still learning the ropes.”
As for adjusting to Ohio and the campus in rural Greene County – he said he’s seen snow in the mountains, but “never actually falling,” – he said he tells the folks back home: “It’s really green out here.”
He grew up in Atwater which he said is an hour north of Fresno and two hours south of San Francisco: “We’re in a valley, a bowl, so it gets 100, maybe 105 degrees in the summer. It’s a dry heat. In the winter, it’ maybe 40 degrees.”
This weekend he said his mom, who has remarried, will be here with her husband and his girlfriend is coming out, too.
He’s reconnected with his dad, who got out of prison a year ago, and he said his relationship with his mom “has never been better.”
As for Massa, they’ve been together seven years now and plan to wed next summer.
Like he said: “Life goes on and you can either choose to be sad and mope around or be happy and look forward to the next day.”
He’s chosen the latter.
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