Dec. 9, 2015
By Jerome Boettcher | Subscribe to Commodore Nation
Friends of Kacy Scarpa were always in for a literal trick or treat when hanging out with her parents.
Her mother, Karyn, would jump in the lake near their house, hitch a rope onto their boat and show off the skills that made her a barefoot water skiing world champion and a 12-time Canadian champion.
“She likes to show off for my friends when they come over,” Scarpa said. “I’ll take her barefooting and she’ll do tricks.”
Her father, Glenn, was no slouch in the kitchen. He was a chef at Mario’s, an Italian restaurant owned by his father (since reopened by Glenn and renamed Scarpa’s Italian).
“I remember my dad packing me lunches for school,” Scarpa recalls. “I would have chicken marsala with vegetables and I would bring it out at the lunch table and everyone would be super jealous of my food. It was definitely a nice perk growing up.”
Kacy Scarpa, a redshirt junior on the Vanderbilt soccer team and steady presence at holding midfielder, has also made a name for herself.
Before she arrived on campus this fall, she already had the title of national champion attached to her name. She spent the last three seasons at Florida State, which won the national championship in 2014 after playing for the title in 2013 and reaching the Final Four in 2012.
“Last year was obviously a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she said. “Even just playing for a national championship was something I know I’ll never forget. I remember holding someone who was crying because she was a senior and she was ecstatic because her dream had finally come true. Each year we had come so close and fallen short. The emotion behind it all was surreal.”
While she calls winning a collegiate national championship the highlight of her soccer career, she felt incomplete.
After redshirting her freshman season in 2012, she had two years of eligibility left. She could stay at Florida State, where she had been used sparingly off the bench her first two seasons, or transfer and provide more of an impact.
“It came down to me wanting more and knowing that I could contribute more,” she said. “It was more of a personal decision in the fact that it wasn’t all that I wanted. The national championship was obviously something I’ll never take for granted, that experience, having that opportunity. But I knew personally that I wanted something more out of my collegiate soccer career.”
The academics component was also important. In addition to being a three-time member of the ACC Academic Honor Roll and Dean’s List at Florida State, she was also awarded the prestigious NCAA Elite 89 Award, which is presented to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average competing at the finals site for each of the NCAA’s 89 championships.
Naturally, Vanderbilt entered the conversation for Scarpa. She then got a vote of confidence from FSU teammate Cheyna Williams, who had transferred from Vanderbilt. Williams spoke highly of the school and her Vanderbilt teammates and suggested to Scarpa to contact new coach Darren Ambrose, who had just been hired at Vanderbilt the day before.
Scarpa’s father got in touch with Ambrose, she visited campus and immediately meshed with members of the team. The decision has been a success for both parties as Scarpa has started all but one game (due to injury) and has helped the Commodores turn their program around.
“I wanted it be a move for both, not just soccer, not just academics,” said Scarpa, a medicine, health and society major who plans on going to graduate school to become a physician’s assistant. “I don’t think this time last year I thought that finding a school I was truly happy at was possible. That sounds really morbid, but I didn’t know if the right fit was out there, if I could find the soccer and the school part. But I did. I finally feel like I’ve found my perfect college atmosphere and school.”
Kacy Scarpa is adding another chapter to an already athletic family.
Both of her sisters, Jessie and Sandy, played soccer in high school and Jessie is a sophomore forward at North Carolina.
Glenn was an All-American infielder at Florida Southern and played baseball professionally in Holland. Karyn moved to Lakeland from Canada when she was 18 to pursue barefoot waterskiing and compete for the Canadian National Team.
Kacy remembers watching her mother win a bronze medal at a world championship in 2003.
“That was really cool for me to see my mom doing something she grew up doing and competing at in the same way I play soccer,” said Scarpa, who has dual citizenship in Canada. “If you become skilled at it, it is like riding a bike, it is really easy to get up, but definitely challenging. Once you’re up, you’re pretty good unless you stick your toes in the water and face plant, which is not fun.”
While soccer was the sport of choice for Scarpa, her parents also encouraged her to try others. She dabbled in water skiing. She played softball through middle school. At George Jenkins High School, she was a three-sport athlete, earning all-county honors in volleyball and finished eighth in the triple jump at the state track and field championships.
“They have definitely helped me in the genetic area and also encouragement and moral support,” she said. “They never really pushed me into, ‘Oh, you should do soccer. You should do this.’ It was always like, ‘What do you like the best?’ Or, ‘What do you want to do?’ I never really felt the pressure to keep playing soccer, which I think has really helped. They let me ride it out and just find out if it was my passion or not.”
