Andrew Fantucchio senior send-off: living his ‘what if'
When he was growing up, Andrew Fantucchio dreamed of being a professional athlete just like every other little boy from Boston. From the land of the Red Sox and the Patriots, he grew up listening to sports talk radio shows and bonded with his father over their shared love of sports.
“I wasn't super into the Bruins as a young kid,” Fantucchio said. “But my dad had old hockey gear in the house, and I remember putting that on and I would pretend to be a hockey player. And my room upstairs, that'd be like the locker room. And I’d put on all the of the gear and I walked through the house like I was getting ready to go out on the ice.”
Like many, Fantucchio’s dreams of going pro faded away as he grew up. Despite that, they never fully left his heart.
Just a few short years ago, Fantucchio was working at a Dave & Buster’s and attending Massasoit Community College in Brockton, Massachusetts. He started a podcast with his friends, but while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, Fantucchio found a new passion in writing.
“It's like a puzzle, weaving that thread throughout each little paragraph, each word,” Fantucchio said. “How do you want the reader to feel when they hit a period at the end of a paragraph, at the sentence? I love all of that.”
Deciding he wanted to challenge himself, Fantucchio looked into transferring schools and ended up at Hofstra University in the fall of 2021. He got involved in The Hofstra Chronicle and WRHU, working up the ranks at breakneck speed.
“I think I just took on so much with such … aggression isn't the right word, but I had this, you know, ‘go get it’ kind of attitude,” Fantucchio said. “It was the first time in my life that I was allowed to pursue the things I wanted … It felt good, kind of like this is my time now. And I want to do with it what I want, so I wasn't going to waste it.”
Fantucchio quickly became a sports editor for the Chronicle and a producer for shows at WRHU. He covered the Hofstra baseball team as a beat reporter, infamously delivering 20-to-30-page reports each week.
During his time with the Pride, he wrote what he considers to be one of the most important pieces he has written so far: “Wear it with Pride: The legacy of Nick Colleluori,” the story of the late Colleluori and the men’s lacrosse team. The story combined Fantucchio’s love for feature writing and his mission to make an impact through his work.
“We only have one life, and there's like, ‘Oh, you only live once, go live it up and party,’” Fantucchio said. “No, it's ‘make sure your life means something.’ Make sure there's an impact. Make sure there's some sort of value and that doesn't mean fame or fortune. It just means like, okay, you had a purpose behind everything you did.”
At WRHU, Fantucchio also worked as a producer for the Islanders radio network, which eventually lead to his current job as beat reporter for National Hockey Now. The job was more than just a step forward in his career – in a way, it was a thank-you to his younger self who dreamed of making it to the big leagues and those who helped him get there.
“I remember when I got my current position to cover the Islanders as a full-time beat reporter,” Fantucchio said. “I mean, I cried. I called my father when I got the job, and the second that I heard his voice, I just wept. Because it was like, he's sacrificed so much to help me get to where I am now. And sports have always been sort of like our common ground and the thing we could relate to the most, and to share that moment with him and to know like, okay, I'm doing it for him, in a sense. Because he always had to put his life and his needs behind someone else's. And I guess in a way, this is my way of maybe paying him back and making sure that doesn't happen to me.”
Fantucchio is endlessly humble, never complaining and always happy to lend an ear. He can regularly be seen handing out advice to fellow journalism students, meeting with them to go over stories and listening to packages. For him, checking in on how someone is doing is second nature.
While he accomplished a lot in his time here at Hofstra and will remember the moments that moved him forward in his career, that’s not what he’s thinking about as he approaches graduation.
“I’m going to remember all the people,” Fantucchio said. “It's the people, you know? I'm not gonna remember what I learned in class; I'm gonna remember the people. It’s meeting my best friend … it’s meeting my girlfriend … it's meeting people who I think I see myself in and helping them bring that out of them.”
For those who have had the pleasure of meeting Fantucchio, his graduation is bittersweet. He may be dreading his departure, but people know he will go on to do incredible things. His parting advice is something he needed to hear growing up and something he lives by every day.
“Don’t be afraid of the ‘what if,’” Fantucchio said. “Don’t be afraid to push yourself and challenge yourself and try something new, even if some people might think it’s stupid. Some people might think that it’s not worth trying. It is, because you don’t know what you’ll take out of it. You might fail, it might blow up in your face, but you’ll learn something from it. Don’t be afraid of the person you might become because that’s allowing you to discover a new side of yourself. I’ve been able to discover a lot about myself over the last few years. You are the company you keep, and I wouldn’t be who I am without all the people I meet here.”
Photo courtesy of Andrew Fantucchio
