Central Catholic grad D’Annibale skates for the Flyers

CCHS grad is one of the team’s Ice Girls
By Gary R. Blockus
The Morning Call
October 31, 2011

Kasey D’Annibale is in a whirlwind of activity.

She has just returned from volunteering at Chester County Hospital and is in the midst of preparing for her next class as a full-time student at West Chester University. Later, she will train in figure skating at the University of Delaware.

And when the Flyers play their next home game, look for her skating around the Wells Fargo Center rink to clean up the snow three shifts a period as one of the members of the Philadelphia Flyers Ice Girls team.

D’Annibale is a 2009 graduate of Central Catholic and a junior at West Chester University, where she is majoring in exercise science with a minor in psychology while preparing herself for a graduate program to become a physician’s assistant.

The 19-year-old Allentown native’s dizzying pace and schedule would make lesser people crumble, but she takes advantage of every waking moment to achieve her dreams.

D’Annibale began skating as a 4-year-old at the former Ice Palace in Allentown, and when that closed, she shifted to what is now the Steel Ice Center in Bethlehem. A competitive figure skater for as long as she can remember, she started heading to the University of Delaware’s nationally recognized program during high school, commuting back and forth from Allentown to Delaware every day in the summers to train.

She was tested for and received gold medal recognition in pairs skating, freestyle and moves in the field. She has won state championships and Keystone State gold medals.

Now, that training and experience are paying off for her as a first-year member of the highly visible 10-woman Flyers Ice Girls. The women, during breaks in the action, clean off the snow and slush that build up on the ice at National Hockey League games. (The Zamboni is used to clean the ice between periods.)

D’Annibale is believed to be the first Lehigh Valley native to skate for the team.

“This is my first year,” she said during a phone interview, “but it’s also the first year that we are doing more media and they’re making us media celebrities in the Flyers world.”

Last week, D’Annibale appeared on Philadelphia’s Fox channel 29 with Flyers forward Max Talbot.

With 10 girls on the team, four work each home game with one or two alternates in case of sickness or an emergency commitment. The women get paid $50 per game and $50 for a two-hour promotional appearance.

“We get to the night games around 3:30 or 4 and get our hair and makeup professionally done,” she said. “Then, for the first couple of games, we went to the Broad Street entrance [to the Wells Fargo Center] and greet people and take pictures with anyone who wants one.

“We do our shoveling, which is our most important job, three times each period.”

The crowd seems to love when the girls hit the ice, with two skating to the far end of the Zamboni entrance, and two to the near end to shovel the snow and slush from along the boards and in front of the goals. The team is getting professional photos taken the first weekend in November so that the women can autograph photos for the team’s fans.

Despite being a competitive figure skater, D’Annibale was not fully prepared for the celebrity status the women have at a Flyers games.

“It was a little overwhelming at first,” she admitted. “All these people were coming up to me and asking for pictures. I didn’t realize how big a part of the team we really are. People know who we are, especially the girls from the team last year. It’s such a rush going out on the ice, especially that first game, being in front of 20,000 people.”

The Ice Girls are not allowed to fraternize with the players, but small talk does take place.

“We were shoveling along the boards the other day by the players benches and one of the referees was there,” D’Annibale recalled. “[Chris] Pronger was like, ‘You guys can go around him.’ That was cool. We can’t hang out with them, though, and we have to be respectful of them.”

D’Annibale has been a Flyers fans and attended a few games each season (she’s also a big Eagles fan), but never thought about the ice girls until her coach at the University of Delaware, former U.S. pairs skater Philip Dulebohn, called her and told her to register for the tryouts online.

Dulebohn ran the skating portion of the tryouts, which took place at the Virtua Center Flyers Skate Zone in Voorhees, N.J., where the Flyers practice. About 100 girls showed up for the auditions, and the group was whittled to 20. Those 20 were given scripts to memorize and repeat in short order to prove that the prospects could learn lines and hold up to meeting with the public. D’Annibale made it into the top 10, which finalized the team selection.

While her life seems like a whirlwind, so do her trips on the ice in front of thousands upon thousands of hockey fans.

With her shoulder-length red hair flying as she skates out, she is instantly recognizable to everyone. It is that same joie de vivre that D’Annibale hopes will earn her a spot in a program for her ultimate goal, that of being a physician’s assistant.