Going far ... ... While staying close to home
When it came to hockey, Giana Savastano had a gift. It was one that would take her to two boarding high schools that weren’t exactly around the corner from her native Burrillville. Her decision to play at nearby Providence College was met with great enthu
It took six hours to reach Lake Placid, N.Y., with Dave and Kerri Savastano traveling through and around snow-covered mountains on their way to seeing their middle child and only daughter, Giana.
This time, the trek to the town where the 1980 Winter Olympics were staged had nothing do with Giana’s forte. Hockey wasn’t on the docket. Giana, then 14, had an issue with her braces.
“They drove six hours up and six hours back just to get me to a dentist appointment,” Giana said, her tone full of gratitude as she recounted one of the many instances during her high school years when her parents were there for her, even if Mom and Dad weren’t exactly around the corner.
When it came time to select a college where she could continue her hockey odyssey, Savastano believed some welldeserved payback was in order after attending boarding school for four years. Her time as a high school student-athlete was spent away from her native Burrillville – one year at the now-closed National Sports Academy (NSA) in Lake Placid, and three at The Winchendon (Mass.) School, where she graduated this past June.
Fortunately, Savastano settled on a college not far from Burrillville. This fall will mark a homecoming of sorts when she skates for the Providence College women’s hockey team as a defenseman that’s listed at 5-foot-6.
"Giana is a versatile player that can play defense and forward. With her ability, we see a very dynamic offensive defenseman that other teams will have a hard time keeping track of,” said PC head coach Bob Deraney. “She adds size, untapped speed, and terrific instincts that cannot be taught. She has the personality that every team needs.”
No doubt, Dave and Kerri Savastano are grateful for the chance to watch Giana sacrifice her body to block pucks and win battles in the corner as an in-state collegian. No more long car rides to see No. 5, the digit that will be on the back of her Friar uniform.
“It’s good being so close now,” Giana, now 18, said recently while sitting in the concourse of Schneider Arena, her hockey home for the next four years. ‘My parents would say, ‘We would love to be around to see your games.’ I thought they deserved that. It’s a choice that I wanted, but it’s also one that made them happy.”
“It was always her dream to go back home and it was a no-brainer when Providence showed interest,” said Laura DiCarlo, Winchendon girls’ hockey head coach. “I think it meant even more to her because she had lived away from home these past four years.”
Giana started playing hockey when she was 4. It was the family game. Older brother Tyler played and father Dave was involved with the Burrillville Junior Broncos as an assistant coach. Giana played with the boys; thus, Dave had to walk a fine line.
“He had to do a little bit of both, be a coach and a dad,” Giana said. “He was definitely protective.”
Soccer, softball, and ballet eventually fell by the wayside in favor of hockey. Her love for the sport only grew during her pre-teen years with the New England Hockey travel team, where through tournaments she was approached by Bill Ward, head coach at National Sports Academy.
“It was always her dream to go back home and it was a no-brainer when Providence showed interest in her.” — Laura DiCarlo, Winchendon School girls’ hockey head coach
Savastano went to Burrillville Middle School prior to making a drastic change that would benefit her hockey career in the long run. She jokes that Tyler, a 2015 graduate of BHS, served as her spokesperson to explain her whereabouts whenever the topic came up at Burrillville High.
“I almost feel like I kind of snuck out,” Savastano said. “I didn’t know how to approach it. Not many people knew where I was going.”
At NSA, Savastano was exposed to a much older brand of competition. She was 13 and skating with 19 year olds. She was also the only freshman in the program. Was she homesick? A little, yet the last thing she wanted to do was give off a vibe that would make her parents worry.
Concerns of a different tenor arose when NSA announced that the hockey program would cease to exist heading into the 2014-15 season. (Deeply in debt, the school shut its doors for good in 2015.)
“My parents kept saying, ‘We’ll find a school for you,’” Savastano said. “Of course I was freaking out!”
Proof that Burrillville is a town where everyone seemingly knows each other helped Savastano plot her next course of action. She had a connection at Winchendon who made it a point to put in a good word with the then-girls’ hockey head coach, Jacques Delorme. Dan Chretien, the school’s athletic director, is a Burrillville native, thus he was familiar with Savastano’s on-ice ability.
“Dan was very anxious to get Giana,” said DiCarlo, who joined the Winchendon girls’ hockey team as an assistant the same year that Savastano enrolled. “He loves anyone who comes from where he’s from.”
“Being closer to home, I was more comfortable,” said Savastano, referencing that Winchendon was an hour and a half away from Burrillville.
In terms of pure talent, Savastano already had a sound foundation upon lacing up the skates at Winchendon. Her drive to hopefully become a NCAA Division I athlete was a year-round quest.
During the offseason from high school, she would spend the summer and fall with the Islanders Hockey Club. For five years, Savastano associated with the East Coast Selects '99 club.
Perhaps her biggest accomplishment over the last four years came in June 2016, when she headed to Maine for the Under-18 Select Girls’ Player Development Camp. It was the type of gathering that, like a moth to a flame, is a magnet for college coaches due to the presence of upper-echelon talent.
As the recruiting process with Providence took flight, Savastano kept in mind the advice given by her supportive dad.
“He would tell me that if I did my best on the ice, everything would work its way out,” she said. “It took me a while before realizing what I had in front of me.”
It was pretty much an open-and-shut case once the Friars let Savastano know that they were quite interested in having her join their 2017 recruiting class. DiCarlo remembers taking a call from Quinnipiac, but the final decision was made when Savastano verballed to PC prior to her senior year at Winchendon.
“At Winchendon, you get to put the name of the college you’re going to and its logo on a board in the hallway,” Savastano said. “I couldn’t wait to get it done and put my name on the wall, but I still had to wait after verballing.”
Savastano did not suffer from senioritis; rather, she continued to push herself as if her college plans were still in flux. She served as Winchendon’s team captain for the 2016-17 season, a badge of on honor she took quite seriously. For instance, if you couldn’t find Savastano on the ice, check the gym. DiCarlo said she would spend up to five days a week in there – if she wasn’t getting up early for a run before classes.
“Her talent level has increased over the past three years, but to see where she’s going to go, playing at Providence with and against players at the Division I level, I think (the Friars) are excited to see how much more she has to give,” DiCarlo said.
A strong student and a member of the lacrosse team at Winchendon, Savastano by choice has been something of an independent teenager these last several years. She had been known as the absentee family member who rarely came home, the price one must pay when striving to reach the goal she ultimately did.
What remained constant throughout her journey was the blessing and backing she received from her two biggest fans, a support system that always seemed to be in the stands regardless of the state where the game was played.
“They always supported her when it came to playing hockey at a high level,” DiCarlo said about parents Dave, an assistant chief in the Johnston Fire Department, and Kerri, who works in the Scituate school system.
One day this summer, Paul and Kerri came up to PC to have lunch with their daughter, who was on campus taking summer classes and working out with her teammates. They talked about how Giana came to Schneider Arena as a kid, both as a skater and spectator.
“The idea of being out there is kind of surreal,” Giana said.
There’s a parents-only room inside the Friars’ rink. The first game of the 2017-18 season is still a month-plus away, yet Paul and Kerri Savastano have already declared that they plan to make a game-day habit of frequenting the aforementioned Schneider Arena spot.
“I always laugh it off, but I know it’s true,” said Giana Savastano, the daughter who is finally back home.