Norwich University

On top of being a distinguished letter winner, Venezia was a three-year letter winner in both hockey and soccer. Both teams had tremendous success. 

"We lost four games in the three years I played on the soccer team," Venezia said. "We had very successful teams and a phenomenal coach in Lefty Lyford. The 1964 and 1966 teams are both Hall of Fame teams are both Hall of Fame teams. I played with some great teammates and many of the guys on the team are still really close friends of mine."  

On the ice, Venezia played alongside Roger Guillmette and Paul Gallerani who lit up the scoreboard for three consecutive seasons. 

"Together as a line we had tremendous success," Venezia said of his line mates that combined to score 150 points in 22 games. "I knew my job and I loved every minute of it. I was kind of the worker of the line as I didn't quite have the finesse of the other two guys. Our coach, Bob Preistly was smart enough to keep our line together for basically the whole time we were at Norwich." 

One of those seasons was the 1966-67 campaign where the Cadets finished with their best record in program history going 15-8-1 overall and 13-2-1 in Division II. 

"We just knew how to win," Venezia recalled. "All we did was win. We started the season 1-3 with losses to Colgate, Dartmouth and Middlebury. But, we ended up going 14-3-1 in our next 18 games and beating Middlebury." 

"There wasn't an easy team on our schedule," Venezia said. "We played five Division I teams and the Austrian Olympic team. We also beat Northeastern that year. Between soccer and hockey it was a magical year."