Franklin Pierce senior is heading down under to follow a dream on ice

By Anika Clark
Sentinel Staff
Published: Saturday, May 16, 2009

Franklin Pierce University senior Joshua M. Lupinek will graduate today with a 3.93 grade-point average, a double major in management and mathematics and a father who says he's amazed by his son's success.

But as Lupinek talks about his accomplishments - and the road he's taken to get

there - he doesn't come across as arrogant. Instead, he speaks with the quiet confidence of someone who knows he has a future.

"I still don't know what I want to do," he said, before pondering some of tomorrow's financial unknowns. "... But I feel like I can do it, you know? I can just work more or get another job. I feel like I'm actually finally able to make life moves, even though I don't know where I'm going."

Regardless, he's off to a pretty good start.

In the fall, the 24-year-old will attend graduate school at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Conn., where he'll study sport management and sociology.

But first he's heading down under. On Tuesday, Lupinek will fly to Australia to join the Central Coast Rhinos professional men's ice hockey team.

"Basically, it was just kind of like lucky timing, I guess," he said, of the offer he received to replace an injured player after e-mailing his resume to several teams in the Australian Ice Hockey League.

He's a little fuzzy on the details - where, exactly, he'll be staying, for example. But, he said, "I'm just going. ... I'm not a worry wart about stuff. I'm able to roll with anything."

In addition to having an adventure, joining the team is also a way for Lupinek to nourish a dream that he'd let slip away - of a professional ice hockey career.

Asked what the sport means to him, Lupinek - who grew up playing ice hockey on a pond with his father - is clear.

"It's the same reason anybody has a hobby or anybody plays a sport," he said. "You just love it. It's just like everything."

It also helped bring him to Franklin Pierce.

With a place always waiting for him at the Eddie's Auto Body in East Haddam, Conn. - the business his grandfather Edward L. Lupinek started in the 1950s - he said, "I didn't need to go to college."

Instead of attending a four-year university right out of high school, he spent three years playing in Canada's juniors league - essentially minor league hockey without the pay.

However, that caught the eye of college recruiters, and at the age of 20, he came to Franklin Pierce.

Then life - and a bad tryout - threw him a curve ball.

As a freshman, "I got cut (from the men's ice hockey team), which was like the worst possible experience you could imagine, he said.

Within weeks, thanks to an opening left by a player who quit, Lupinek was back on the team.

But being cut left an impression.

"Those couple of weeks were really tough. ... I was like, ‘Well, I'm here. I'm just going to do really good in school,' " he said. "Everything was hockey first. So everything kind of got, like, ‘half-hockey' after that. ... You've got to make sure you're not dependent on that."

In fact, Lupinek's four-year varsity ice hockey stint is only one of the 18 lines on his resume that cover his awards and activities. Among them is his role as a student senator since 2005, a member of the varsity men's golf team and a longtime coach in the Hartford Wolf Pack Learn to Skate Program.

Lupinek also picked up a slew of academic honors and received enough merit-based scholarships to pay for his last three years in college.

Meanwhile, he still found time to keep a position he's held since 2003 as assistant golf coach at his East Haddam high school.

"You know, they look up to me because I'm a college athlete," he said of his high school charges.

Lupinek clearly has a competitive streak - "I like to do things better than other people, I guess," he said - but he's also humble about the origins of his success.

"I just worked really hard. I don't feel like I'm smarter than anybody else," he said. "I just know that I've logged way more hours."

Lupinek's father, Edward M. Lupinek, also noted this work ethic in his son.

"He'd call me in the morning. He hadn't gone to bed all night," he said. "He worked for every bit of it."

Still, Edward Lupinek said, "If he did much less than he did, I would still be proud of him."

So why the drive to do so much?

"I was like a third or fourth line guy in hockey here. Not the best player by far. But (in) sports you can't really control that," Lupinek said. "School, I got success. ... It's probably one of the only things in my life that I can actually control."

Still, as he and his fellow students face an uncertain future, he seems happy to just go with the flow.

Perhaps, he said, he'll become a college professor or do advertising or management work for a hockey team.

Eventually, he'd also like to fund his dad's retirement by buying Eddie's Auto Body and keeping the shop in the family.

Regardless, William G. Costa -a senior lecturer in Franklin Pierce's business department - said he sees big things in Lupinek's future.

"The key thing about Josh is he has a unique combination of talents," Costa said, while adding that this is a trait often seen in business CEOs.

Although some people fall short of their potential, Costa said, "This guy is getting every ounce of whatever talent he has."

And maybe, just maybe, Lupinek said, his dreams to hit the ice hockey big time will come true.

But if they don't, there's always Australia.

"Now I can say I'm a professional athlete," he said, smiling. "How cool is that?"

Anika Clark can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1432, or aclark@keenesentinel.com.