Athlete of the Week: 10 questions with Teddy Kurtzweil, Loyola Academy football

Teddy Kurtzweil is a senior wide receiver for the Ramblers. Kurtzweil, of Glenview, caught the game-winning touchdown in Week 1. He is also a third baseman and pitcher for Loyola’s baseball team.

1. Do you have any pregame rituals or superstitions?

For me, I start with listening to a playlist called Chill Classics that mellow me out on the bus. And once I get to the field, I’m listening to rock, like “War Pigs,” or like AC/DC. So that’s my ritual; I go from mellow music to pump up rock.

2. What do you hope to do next year?

I’m not sure yet. I’m looking into college and not sure if I want to play sports in college. I’ll decide that pretty soon. But I do want to get into a good business school.

3. What is your dream job?

My dream job actually is to be the general manager of an NFL team, just making the decisions. Right now and as a kid I would go into “Madden” (video game) and rebuild teams and that really interested me.

4. If you could try another sport, what would it be?

I would say golf. My dad is a huge golfer. I haven’t had time because of baseball and football, and only go out a little bit, but the few times I really liked it and want to get good at it.

5. Who is your favorite athlete?

I would say Pete Crow-Armstrong (CF-Chicago Cubs). I love watching him play, especially early in the year when he was doing everything. I went to a couple of Cubs games and was in the bleachers and everyone was chanting his name. It’s so cool to watch him play.

6. What is your favorite thing to do off the field?

I love hanging out with my friends and brothers (three brothers: JT, Luke and James), just tossing a Frisbee around or playing pickup football with them. And me and my friends went to the beach a lot this summer.

7. What has been your top sports moment so far?

I would say the game-winning touchdown. I would say that drive in general. I got the ball four or five times I think. There was three minutes on the clock and I was expecting the sophomore connection (between quarterback Matthew Lee) and Jordan (McKinley). And then Matthew went my way the first two plays. And the last play, I caught the ball and couldn’t imagine I held onto it. Seeing everybody rush toward me was one of the greatest feelings I’ll have.

8. If you’re in Walgreens with a couple bucks, what are you buying?

No. 1, I’m always getting a chocolate milk — Prairie Farms especially. It’s my go-to when I need a drink. And then Welch’s big bag of fruit snacks, and also I’m a plain pretzels kinda guy.

9. What is something people don’t know about you?

I actually really like to play piano. I’m not amazing at it but I enjoy it. I watch videos and learn things by ear. I play so many times my family kicks me off for playing too loud. It’s a secret thing not many people know about me.

10. What is one thing that needs to happen for the Ramblers to get back to state?

The key to getting there is we continue to grow together. We have a lot of young people who have never played (varsity) snaps before. Team bonding has gotta be a main factor. We had a team dinner last week; it was super fun. At the end of the second half of the game, Liam Walsh, our center and captain, gave a heartfelt speech about how hard we worked this summer and how much we bonded. … The theme this week is trust — trust that everyone is going to run the right routes, make the right blocks, that the defense is going to hold them, the quarterback is going to make the right reads, and we’ll be unstoppable. Toward the end of the game, we had that trust in each other.

Trust is the real component.

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