Matthew Barbacane '25 Recruiting Profile

In answer to your question, 'What makes me a good candidate for your team?', it's simple...No one works harder than me.  Period.

My goal every day is to get better than I was yesterday; in school, on the ice, and in life.  I love to learn, I love school and I love hockey.  I maintained straight A's all through middle school, first honors in my first two years at Malvern Prep while playing Tier 1 hockey, traveling the east coast and Canada, playing for my school team and running several small businesses I created.  

I am a dyslexic learner so none of this comes easy to me.  I have to work at it and work hard.   When I got recruited to Malvern Prep for hockey I asked my teachers for letters of recommendation, every single one of them wrote back within minutes saying how honored they were to do that for me.   What I was most proud of is, that every single person noted my success comes from my strong work ethic and never giving up.  This is generally echoed by my coaches on the ice too.  

I remain focused.  I push myself by setting goals and I achieve them by working at them every single day.   I started playing ice hockey at what would be considered 'late in life'.   I was 8 1/2 the first time I stepped on the ice.  To help me get up to speed quickly, my dad signed me up with an Olympic figure skating coach. He wanted me to learn how to be a great skater and he figured I had a lot of room to make up for so we went to the best we could find.  After my first lesson, she came off the ice screaming, "He's BEYOND basic!  He has SO much work to do!"  I was still kind of little so of course, I was upset, but I went out there every day and worked at it.  She comes to as many of my games as she can because she takes credit for how good I am now.  From time to time she still yells at me to get on my edges, and believe me I DO!  She's scary, but she means well and she's normally right.  

When I found hockey, I found something that gave me confidence.  As I kept getting better, it seemed to give me confidence in all other aspects of my life as well.  I worked really hard and tried to get on the ice every day.  I worked with coaches and my dad and I watched endless hours of YouTube videos.  I set up practice drills on my driveway and in my basement.  I shot 100's of pucks every day and little by little, I got better and better.  

Hockey has done so much for me.  It has shown me that you get out of it exactly what you put into it.  It's taught me how to grow from failure.  How to get comfortable in the uncomfortable.  It's taught me teamwork and it's taught me leadership.  These things have applied to so many aspects of my life.   Because of it, I got the chance to go to an amazing school, one that is even better than the school I was attending.  I have built summer camps for the kids in my neighborhood, I created a bait-making business, I had a sneaker business at one point and everything I did was built on these same principles.  

That's what you get when you pick me for your team.  A dedicated, hard worker who is coachable and will work harder than anyone else out there to achieve my dream!