Fife Flyers: Gio Finoro on sporting travels from track and field to ice hockey
Lockdown may have hit the pause button on every aspect of our lives, but it also led to doors opening when restrictions lifted - and new opportunities emerging.
For Gio Finoro, the pandemic saw him put his studies on hold, and swap North America for Europe, heading to Italy, then Sweden and now the UK where he made a scoring start to his first weekend with Fife Flyers.
The 27-year old made the decision to move to keep playing. He was icing the University of Guelph Gryphons in Ontario when everything stopped. Like so many players, he lost an entire season, and, after 18 months, he had managed just seven games.
With talk of the 2021-22 season also being cancelled, Finoro swapped his life in south western Ontario for Asiago in Italy, with the plan to continue studying online for his university course into human kinetics.
“I wanted to play again,” he said “I spoke to my family and agreed I’d finished the third year of my studies online, but the programme then went back to in-person classes so I couldn’t finish, and switched majors.
“I wanted to be an osteopath and have two courses to do, but it’ll have to wait until I finish playing hockey, and I have no plans to stop doing that any time soon. That’d mean being in school into my 30s so I’m looking at different paths, but hockey comes first.”
Finoro’s junior hockey days saw him ice with Barrie Colts in the OHL - where his team-mates included former Flyers’ imports Ben Hawerchuck and Lucas Chiodo - and Gatineau Olympiques in the QMJHL before university life brought him back to his home city of Guelph.
Finoro comes from a sporting family, but not a hockey one. His mum was a highly rated track athlete, and he followed in her running shoes at 400m, and also took part in the javelin.
“A couple of cousins played in hockey house leagues, and we’d watch the NHL games on television, but I was into my track sports,” he said. “When I was seven I’m told I woke up and decided I was a hockey player! My parents said that was fine but I’d never even owned skates.
That year they put me into hockey and I started to play from age eight onwards.”
Fast forward just under two decades, and his skates took him to Italy with Asiago in the Alps League and then into the Austrian ICE League with the club, where he logged just shy of 100 games before joining Bolzano as well as being called up to the Italian national team.
He then moved on to Sweden at the start of the season, icing in four games with IF Troja-Ljungby before the call came from Fife.
“My agent was looking at options and Fife came up very quickly,” said Finoro. “He told me the team had new owners who were turning over a new leaf and things were on the up - with some guys out injured this was a good opportunity . It was a good opportunity with smoke guys out injured to come in and play big minutes.
“I knew a few people who knew guys in the room and they gave some great background on the club - it’s a good, close group here which is something I really like. It’s not cliquey - I don’t feel like an outsider. We come to the rink, we have positive energy.”
Finoro bagged his first goal in only his second game - a short-handed counter against Coventry Blaze - and has already iced with several different line-mates as players move around to provide cover. He is confident the team will start to gel as it gets through a sticky spell where pucks haven’t been hitting the net.
“In hockey there are ebbs and flows. Our goal is to be better as a team, and I want to be a difference maker for the team - not only producing goals but working the guys and helping them develop their game,” he said.
“We’re a bit depleted with guys out but we will get through this spell with the players we have here. We are a meat and potatoes team - we work hard and have a desire to be better.”