Power Play: Stephen Castagna ’26 Gives a Star Performance
The cool bite of the air in the Bentley Arena is familiar to Stephen Castagna ’26 as he takes to the ice for men’s ice hockey team practices and games. On ice skates since he was about 2 years old in his hometown of Vancouver, Canada, he worked hard to earn his place as assistant captain and starting forward with the Bentley Falcons. But the NCAA Division I student-athlete is proving himself off the ice, too: A Corporate Finance and Accounting major, Castagna is on the President’s List for academic achievement, serves on the e-board of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and completed an internship at a global financial services company in summer 2024.
“Something I’ve learned since coming to Bentley is how to be diligent with my time,” Castagna says. “When I met my teammates, they were super welcoming, but I could tell that unlike most schools, there was a heavy emphasis on the student-athlete aspect. We’re obviously here to play hockey — and we want to be as good as we can and win as many games as possible — but we’re at such a good school that a lot of students take pride in their academics.”
As his teammates talked about their internships and compared GPAs, Castagna took mental notes. “It’s not really what I was expecting when I first showed up, but it caught my eye right away. Four or five guys had internships, and it was interesting for me to hear that they realize that hockey is going to end at some point so you might as well have a good education to fall back on. It makes people more well-rounded.”
The sense of friendly competition isn’t surprising for a group of Division I hockey players, and Castagna says it made him feel at home when he arrived on campus with other student-athletes a week before orientation. “I remember the first time I walked into the Bentley Arena. Even though I played junior hockey in Canada, I had never seen anything like these facilities,” he says.
Castagna vividly remembers his first home game for Bentley against University of Maine. “It was basically sold out and the student section was crazy with people screaming and banging on the glass. It was everything I dreamed about playing college hockey, and I’m almost getting chills talking about it now. Hearing the fans makes you want to play harder.”
SKILLED SUCCESS
Since that first season, Castagna has skated strong with the men’s ice hockey team. He was named an assistant captain as a sophomore, leading the team with 21 assists and coming in second with 27 points. He played on both the power play and penalty kill and blocked 29 shots to go along with his offensive production. At the end of the season, he received the Falcon Award, given to the player who “best embodies the values of giving, selflessness and being a good teammate.”
“Playing sports allows you to really learn how to work with different people, because everybody comes from a different background and values different things,” Castagna says. “We’re a team on the ice and we're a team off the ice, and as a leader you’re challenged to create a sense of camaraderie to motivate people to come together and reach a common goal.”
A lot of it, he adds, relies on personal work ethic and self-motivation. “You have to work hard to be good in sports and in life as well; it's up to you,” Castagna says, leaning into a philosophy he learned from Head Coach Andy Jones. “My coach expects us to show up focused and ready to work, and I think that kind of approach is something that Bentley student-athletes take to heart no matter what they’re doing. You show up to class on time, you’re respectful, you listen and you ask questions.”
That kind of discipline likely solidified Castagna’s appointment to assistant captain, though he admits he was caught off guard. “The coaches came into the locker room and told us they were going to pick captains and then Assistant Coach Tom Fiorentino came over, gave me a short speech about showing up, working hard and having a good attitude — and then handed me my No. 17 jersey with ‘assistant captain’ on it. It was pretty overwhelming.”
Castagna is also scoring with technical and power skills off the ice. “There are a lot of group projects at Bentley, and you have to learn how to work with and motivate people who may have different strengths than you do,” he says. “I’ve also learned software like Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, Bloomberg and FactSet in my classes and the Bentley Trading Room.”
And, he adds, “Most professors will ask me about a game or how the season is going. I appreciate the smaller class sizes and how professors know your name and support activities outside of the classroom, I've even received post-game emails from professors after a big game. Bentley has a strong sense of community.”
Off campus, Castagna applied his skills as a wealth management intern at Raymond James Ltd. in Vancouver this summer. He already has an auditing internship lined up at EY for summer 2025. And while he wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to play professional hockey after graduation, he is staying true to his fallback plan with a major that has multiple touch points. “I chose the Corporate Finance and Accounting major because I like the hybrid approach: I don’t want to pigeon-hole myself into one discipline or the other right now. I like having options.”