Blessing the Jug

By Kim Wunner, November 10, 2026

From champion football player to Olympian to the altar, Father Joe Fitzgerald ’93 is a blessed asset of the IC community

Father Joe Fitzgerald '93 at the Vatican

Father Joe Fitzgerald '93 is IC proud, holding an IC shirt in front of the Vatican.

Father Joe Fitzgerald ’93 likes to be called “Father Joe.” His preferred term carries an accessible reverence and informality that feels fitting for the man I interviewed from Long Island, New York. There, he serves as priest in the Diocese of Rockville Centre. He’s also an accomplished athlete. At Ithaca, he was a quarterback, which earned him a place on the 1991 National Championship Team. He is also a former Olympic handball athlete.

The Long Island native came to Ithaca College as a Physical Education major, but he graduated prepared to teach, with a degree that was then called “Social Studies 7-12.” While he loved his phys-ed classes, he also loved history and the broader learnings the humanities offered. A degree in teaching let him combine both interests. It would not be the last time Father Joe would listen a calling and evolve in a different direction than he initially imagined.

After graduation, handball became a full-time profession. Father Joe was introduced to the sport via his older brother, Tom, who initially competed in handball at the Empire State Games level. Both Tom and Father Joe excelled at the sport, and together, they played in the men’s tournament at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta

For those unfamiliar with the sport, handball is a fast-paced indoor team sport that—like basketball—moves the ball down a court by passing, dribbling, and throwing, with the goal of getting the ball into the opponent’s net. But, like soccer, the net is on the ground.

After the 1996 Olympics, Father Joe played professionally in Sweden for a year. He then returned to Atlanta, where he began teaching and coaching football for a high school while continuing to play handball on the National Team. In 2001, he was named USA Team Handball Athlete of the Year and helped the team take home the bronze medal at the 2003 Pan American Games.

Father Joe in an IC football game. Photo submitted.

Father Joe then was given the opportunity to bring his teaching skills into the private sector and began corporate training with companies such as Home Depot, UPS, and Coca-Cola.

Service-oriented work often requires more from a person than simply showing up and doing the job. Full-time sports comes with training and travel, while teaching brings grading papers and developing lesson plans. With his corporate job, Father Joe found himself with something new: a lot of downtime.

He used that time to take the next step toward what would become his ultimate vocation. He began volunteering with the young adults and youth at his church.

Church and spirituality had always been constants in Father Joe's life. While at IC, he found Mueller Chapel. At the Olympics, he sought out a quiet space called the “health center”—now, what would be called a chapel—in the Olympic Village to center himself and always found and participated in a congregation wherever he lived.

During that time of volunteering, he began questioning what was in store for him and seriously considering the priesthood. It was not an unfamiliar path—his uncle was a priest, and both his father’s and mother’s sides of the family were “always around church.”

As Father Joe explains it, “I could be like my dad, a husband, and a father, and that's a fulfilling way to live. Or I could be like my Uncle Bob, a joyful and creative priest who affected many lives and a bigger spiritual family - and maybe that's for me. It wasn’t completely out of left field.”

With a decision made, he moved back to where it all started, Long Island, and began his studies for the priesthood.

Becoming a Catholic priest is a pursuit of human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral growth called Formation. It takes, on average, five to seven years. The first two phases of the process are the Propaedeutic Stage and the Discipleship Stage which involve deep prayer, the development of community life, a break from digital distraction, and foundational theology.

From football to handball to the altar, Father Joe has thrived in community.

Father Joe completed these at the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which serves Nassau and Suffolk counties.

On his 30th birthday, he enrolled in the Cathedral Seminary House of Formation in Douglaston, Queens, to begin the next phase of his religious studies. Almost two weeks later, planes flew over the Seminary airpace and into the Twin Towers on 9/11 Father Joe recalls this as a time of deep reflection, “It was really powerful for me to learn about forgiveness, restoration and healing.”

Father Joe completed his studies and was ordained in 2007 as a priest for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, which served Nassau and Suffolk counties.

His vocation in the priesthood has taken him all over the world. He has presided over weddings in Rome and Miami. And, in 2024, he traveled to Paris during the Olympics to serve as a chaplain as the United States representative at the Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Which brings us to Cortaca Weekend 2026. Father Joe will celebrate a Catholic Mass on Saturday morning at the iconic St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City before the Cortaca Jug game at Yankee Stadium. A choir and string quartet comprised of students from IC’s School of Music, Theatre and Dance will also be part of the service.

The Mass will be at 9:00 a.m. Afterward, Father Joe will join his teammates from the 1991 IC National Championship Football Team at Yankee Stadium. There, they will be called onto the field and celebrated as this year’s IC Athletic Hall of Fame inductees.

So much of this story comes full circle. Long Island is where he grew up and where he eventually returned to pursue the priesthood. A sport introduced to him by his older brother led to an extraordinary athletic career. Having men of the cloth in his family meant that the priesthood was never an entirely unfamiliar calling. And now, he will offer Mass at the world-renowned St. Patrick’s Cathedral—just 30 miles from his home—before celebrating alongside the football teammates who helped shape his years at Ithaca.

Like many IC alumni, Fitzgerald listened to who he is and weaves together lessons from one calling into another, making him uniquely positioned to serve and lead his community.