Athletic Director David Palazzi joins us today on November 12th, 2025, with some thoughts and opinions about Leominster High School’s upcoming winter sports season.
Palazzi has been a part of Leominster High’s community for quite some time, being a former student-athlete and head coach for the boys football team from 2013-2018, and girls basketball team for 2 years before stepping down from coaching after being promoted to head Athletic Director.
Coach Palazzi is excited to go into the season head-on as all of the winter teams, hockey, basketball, indoor track, and wrestling, face great competition.
After asking Palazzi about what his main goals were for the athletic department beyond wins and losses, he replied he feels incredibly passionate towards the department and the athletes within it.
“My main thing as an athletic director is all about the experience for the student-athletes; great bus rides, great games, buzzer-winning shots, last-minute goals in field hockey, and last touchdowns.”
He wants the players at LHS to show that they can have good skills, but also present a humble attitude.
“I don’t want the athletes in this school to feel less than if they are working hard, because sometimes, and I say this to coaches all the time, sometimes the other teams are just better.”
Palazzi believes the main struggle that the Athletic Department faces is scheduling.
“We want to have a schedule where our kids are challenged, but we don’t want them to be overwhelmed.”
He went on to say, “I’ll use girls lacrosse last year as an example, where the past 5 years we were really, really successful; we had a lot of players, and last year we had some injuries, and a really difficult schedule. We didn’t see that coming. We became overwhelmed with some of our opponents.”
Student athletes know that balancing sports and school can be difficult, but with hard-work they manage to push through.
Fundraising for these sports is essential to the outcome of a smooth and successful season. Each team does something unique in order to raise money for their sport.
“They [the teams] do the calendar raffles. Some teams do the snap fundraisers, which is a really good way to raise money.”
“Our district has been very good in supporting all of the teams with athletic equipment and nice uniforms, and all of the fundraising activities in each group took it above and beyond,” said Palazzi.
When asked if he thought there would be any standout teams this season, he responded with, “I think the winter teams will be somewhat successful with most of our teams.”
He continued by saying that overall, basketball, hockey, indoor track, and wrestling will have competitive games, and he is excited to see how the seasons play out.
Even with the cold weather approaching and stressful academic work, Palazzi believes that winter will be an eventful and strong season for these athletes, and he can’t wait.
