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September 13, 2012

MASH grad reaches goal of playing professional hockey

By Lisa Byers Meadville Tribune

MEADVILLE — At 15 years old, playing professional hockey was pretty much all Meadville native Anthony Scarpino thought about.

“I knew I wanted to play pro hockey then,” he said. “I just didn’t know where it would be.”

But as the years moved along, Scarpino began to realize his potential and figured a career in Europe one day was a definite possibility.

That day has come.

On Sunday, Scarpino hopped on a plane and made the 4,000-mile, eight-and-a-half hour trip to Sweden to begin his career as a professional hockey player with the Vännäs Hockey Club.

Vännäs is a small town outside of Umeå, which is located on the coast about 400 miles from Stockholm. It’s a hockey town. Everything Scarpino has ever wanted.

“I’ve always liked the lifestyle,” Scarpino said. “It’s a much slower paced lifestyle, but it is fully developed. They are fully on board with professional sports.

“The atmosphere is amazing. The arenas ... it’s just like a European soccer game with all the crazy fans, songs, drums. It’s fun to be around. It’s something I always wanted to experience first hand. I’m excited.”

Getting there hasn’t come without a lot of hard work and sacrifice.

Scarpino has spent much of his life playing ice hockey for travel clubs, the Meadville Bulldogs and then collegiately.

The 2006 Meadville Area Senior High School graduate just recently concluded his college career at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. Scarpino, 24, played three seasons for the NCAA Division III squad. He competed in 71 games and scored a total of 73 points.

Scarpino also played 24 games with the Kemptville 73s and 22 games with the Cumberland Grads of the Canadian Junior Hockey League, and seven games with NCAA Division III Hobart College.

This summer, Scarpino began working with certified personal trainer John Sutton and sought an agent in Europe to help his dream of playing professionally come true.

“When you’re young and you start playing a sport in the backyard and you practice, you dream of making the last shot in a game or in my case scoring a big goal to win the Stanley Cup,” Scarpino said. “The older you become, the more realistic you get about those goals and dreams.

“I never let any doubt creep into those dreams that I had. I just kept pursuing them. There were times of doubt, but I never stopped believing I could do this.”

That belief grew stronger following a solid senior season at Hamilton. Scarpino scored 15 goals and had 16 assists for a career-high 31 points, which ranked third in the New England Small College Athletic Conference. He had a conference-best seven power-play goals.

“I worked in college to build toward (playing professionally) and my senior year was a culmination of everything I worked for,” Scarpino said. “I had a good enough year statistically and developmentally that I was confident enough to move forward with an agent.”

Scarpino met that agent in Sweden just after the college season concluded this spring.

“We went over and talked with him and talked with some teams and through the course of the summer that continued,” Scarpino said. “We eventually were able to find a fit that both sides liked and went ahead and signed.”

Scarpino’s first game with Vännäs is Sunday. Whether Scarpino will be on the ice for that first game remains to be seen, but being there in uniform with his new team will be another notch in his belt and another step forward in his career.

Vännäs plays in the Swedish Division I, considered the third highest level in the country.

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