A lanky-limbed, wide-eyed Jimmy Garoppolo eagerly sat in his dorm room in Stevenson Hall in 2010 with nothing more than a pen, a notebook and a determination.

The starting freshman quarterback for the Eastern football team wanted to leave his mark so desperately that he was jotting down every passing record in the program’s history — some were held by Sean Payton, others by Tony Romo.

This was a ritual Garoppolo was familiar with. He wrote down the same records when he became the starting quarterback at Rolling Meadows High School, where he happened to rewrite the record books.

“I did it as a benchmark for myself,” Garoppolo said. “Setting goals is something you have to do in life.”

Garoppolo returned to his home in Arlington Heights for Thanksgiving, two weeks before Eastern embarked on its 2013 postseason journey.

In his room, hoarded away in a cardboard box overflowing with miscellaneous clutter and nostalgic keepsakes, the senior rediscovered that notebook.

“I was just going through some old stuff and happened to stumble upon it,” Garoppolo said. “I wasn’t looking for it or anything. It’s interesting that it popped up the way it did.”

He reread all of his personal benchmarks etched in that notebook: career passing yards and touchdown passes, single season passing yards and touchdown passes, and single game touchdown passes.

Now, all of those records belong to Garoppolo between both Eastern and the Ohio Valley Conference.

“There was no doubt in my mind that it was a possibility,” Garoppolo said thinking back to his freshman season. “It’s just part of that quarterback confidence.”

But one possibility that never crossed the mind of the NFL Draft prospect was the 2013 Walter Payton Award (the FCS’s top offensive player), nor the statistics that came with it.

“I can’t say I saw 5,050 yards, 53 touchdowns and nine interceptions,” Garoppolo said. “My goal was 40 touchdowns and single digit interceptions, so I guess I did pretty well.”

“Pretty well” might be understatement of the year.

Such stats led Eastern’s senior signal-caller, accompanied by his head coach Dino Babers and his parents, Tony and Denise Garoppolo, to Philadelphia for the award ceremony.

“The best part was seeing his parents’ reaction,” Babers said. “Their faces lit up, thinking of the days when he was a little snotty-head boy in dirty diapers, to now look what he has achieved.”

Garoppolo was at the pinnacle of his collegiate career. He brought Eastern back to relevance among the FCS with back-to-back OVC championships and the first ever undefeated season in the OVC.

But Garoppolo’s path to prominence did not soar as effortlessly as did his 375 completions in 2013.

Before Babers was raving that Garoppolo was the William Tell (a Switzerland folk tale who, with a bow and arrow, shot an apple off of his son’s head to save the country) of football, he had to endure two bleak seasons as a freshman and sophomore.

Garoppolo went a combined 2-6 in his first season with the Panthers. He entered his freshman year as a fifth string quarterback who was supposed to red-shirt; he exited as the starter.

“It was a blessing in disguise that I got thrown into the fire so early,” Garoppolo said. “I threw a bunch of interceptions, had all kind of bumps and bruises, because of that it really was a good learning experience.”

Next was sophomore year, a 2-9 record and 1-7 in the Ohio Valley Conference. Garoppolo said his sophomore season was the most frustrating because six losses were decided by 10 points or less.

“We knew we were a good recruiting class, but we were young,” Garoppolo said. “We were right on brink, right there. We just had to break the barrier.”

Thank you, Dino Babers.

With a new coaching staff came a confidence for the football team, but most importantly, for Garoppolo.

“The biggest thing that changed was his confidence,” Babers said. “He was a starting quarterback who won four games in his career, whoop-dee-doo.”

Still, Babers knew Garoppolo was his starting quarterback after seeing the two-year veteran throw just five passes in practice.

Everybody told Babers he was wrong, but the first-year head coach had never seen a faster release, more mobile feet and on-point accuracy all in one quarterback.

But was Garoppolo sold on Babers and his unique offense? No doubt.

Garoppolo’s first sight of the offense was on television in Baylor’s record-breaking 67-56 Alamo Bowl win over Washington on Dec. 29, 2011.

Christmas came a few days late for Garoppolo that year.

How could he not be sold with Baylor’s 777 yards of total offense? Garoppolo was onboard weeks before he met Babers.

Once Garoppolo realized the offense was legit, Babers said he put more time in than anyone.

“He was a gym rat,” Babers said. “You couldn’t get him out of there.”

Garoppolo’s work ethic showed in more ways than one, the lanky-limbed, wide-eyed freshman transformed into a 6-foot-3, 222-pound, never-settling senior.

He secured his own jersey on the wall outside of O’Brien Field next to the two most polarizing figures in Eastern athletics — for now — in Payton and Romo, the same quarterbacks whose career numbers Garoppolo once marveled at.

“I got everything I wanted and more out of Eastern,” he said. “If someone told me I would’ve had the career I had, I’d say, ‘sign me up. I can start right away.’ I would love to do it all over again.”

If only that was a possibility. Everybody wishes the Jimmy Garoppolo years were capable of repeating themselves.

Jimmy is Eastern.

Anthony Catezone can be reached at 581-2812 or ajcatezone@eiu.edu.