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Hobey Baker winner and two-time Olympian back in the hockey business

Scott Fusco, who runs the Edge Sports Center in Bedford, won the Hobey Baker Award in 1986, three years after his brother Mark. Both played for Harvard University. SUN/JULIA MALAKIE Sun staff photos can be ordered by visiting our SmugMug site.
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BEDFORD — During a good portion of his workday, Scott Fusco’s mindset is similar to when he worked in the software consulting business that he and his brother Mark sold in 1999.

He collects money. He books ice time. He orders uniforms.

It’s a business.

“It’s an interesting business for me,” says Fusco.

That is because come late afternoon, kids with skates start to arrive at the Edge Sports Center in Bedford. Fusco steps out of his office and suddenly his business changes.

It’s hockey again.

“You’re on the ice coaching them, helping them,” says Fusco. “The energy level picks up in the building.”

The 1986 Hobey Baker Award winner, two-time U.S. Olympian and Harvard University’s all-time leading scorer, Fusco opened the Edge on Hartwell Road in November of 2007.

He is founder, co-owner and manager of a busy facility with two ice rinks, two lighted outdoor turf fields (one covered by a bubble during the winter months), an athletic training center and health club. The Edge is also home base for the East Coast Wizards club teams in ice hockey, lacrosse and field hockey.

The soft-spoken Fusco, who grew up in Burlington and now lives in Winchester, looks the part of state-of-the-art training facility mogul. At 52, he looks in the same tip-top condition as when last seen hopping over the boards at a high level at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

Fusco soon afterward hopped on a bike and exercised himself into an accomplished triathlete and road runner. He consistently finished in the top five of local events he entered from 1990-2000, including winning two events.

“When I quit hockey, I just wanted to stay in shape. I started biking. I started running on days when I couldn’t ride or didn’t have much time. One thing sort of led to another,” says Fusco.

Fusco’s wife Kevyn, who played soccer and lacrosse at Bowdoin College, has also excelled in triathlons.

“It was just interesting for me to switch over also from a sport in which you play 30 or 45 seconds a time (in shifts) to one where you might be going for four hours,” says Fusco.

Fusco’s racing these days is limited to an occasional road race accompanied by his daughters Bradley, 18, Nell, 16 and Mia, 14.

He also plays pick-up hockey once a week at the Edge. Those games sometimes include Fusco’s older brother Mark, 54, the 1983 Hobey Baker winner, who is former CEO of Aspen Technology Inc. and now sits on the board of directors at Black Duck software.

“I’m not as fast as I once was,” says a smiling Fusco, who tallied 240 points over four seasons at Harvard and skated in two Frozen Fours (though they weren’t called Frozen Fours back then). ” I still try. But you don’t get faster as you get older.”

However, more Fusco speed is on the way to Harvard. Scott’s daughter Bradley, a recent graduate of Buckingham Browne & Nichols in Cambridge, will be a forward on the Harvard women’s hockey team next season.

Fusco jokes he also can tell he is getting older when each year he sees his name drop further down the list of Hobey Baker winners. Hockey’s Heisman was only in its sixth year when Fusco won the award in 1986, three years after his brother Mark, a Harvard defenseman, won it.

“It was at the Final Four (in Providence),” recalls Fusco about the not-so-grand announcement. “The coaches said, ‘You are the winner.’ They had a little press conference in a room that was like this big. Later they had a dinner. But it wasn’t like a big event.”

The announcement in April of this year’s winner, Boston University’s Jack Eichel of Chelmsford, was much more elaborate. Eichel was presented the Hobey Baker near the end of a half-hour TV show broadcast from Northeastern University’s Matthews Arena and shown on the NHL Network and NESN.

Fusco’s Hobey Baker stands prominently in his living room in Winchester. The award has grown considerably in stature since he and his brother won theirs.

“The further you get away from it, the more you realize what goes into winning an award, and the more special you realize it was,” says Fusco. “Not only do you have to be a good player, you have to be lucky. You have to be voted (the award). There are a lot of things that go into winning an award like that. To do it twice (within the same family) is a little unusual.”

It is so unusual, the Fuscos are the only brothers to win the Hobey Baker.

That luck Fusco mentioned, though, ran out for him in the 1986 national semifinal in Providence. A knee injury suffered in Harvard’s semifinal win over Denver kept Fusco out of the final the next night. Michigan State, having had one day to rest, beat Harvard, 6-5. The NCAA back then played its hockey semifinals on separate nights.

“I think it was like 17 years they did it that way, and the team that had the day off won like 14 times,” says Fusco. “The two times we made it to the finals (also losing 6-2 to Wisconsin in 1983 in Grand Forks, ND.), we had to play back-to-back nights both times.”

Fusco, a Belmont Hill grad, recalls his career at Harvard as a special time that included playing three seasons with his brother. “A good group of quality guys and good players came through there,” says Fusco. “They worked hard and wanted to be part of a team. The culture was really good there at the time.”

When Fusco is on the ice conducting camps and clinics at the Edge, he often echoes Bill Cleary, Harvard’s coach from 1971-90.

“He kept the game very simple for the players,” says Fusco. “Clearly we had systems we had to play, but he didn’t overburden the players with rules. You were allowed to be creative.”

Fusco played for the U.S. in both the 1984 and 1988 Olympics. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in economics. He and Mark owned Software Quality Partners, which they sold in 1999.

“I stayed on until 2005 with the company that bought it,” says Fusco. “Then I decided to do something else … and migrated back to hockey.”

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